Pale as Grass in Winter
by wanda von dunayev
Summary: "We were young and in love and we had the willful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane, 7/7 and Epilogue. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the willful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Warning(s): This piece contains graphic depictions of torture, female-on-female sex and romance (both of which are rendered in detail), child abuse, and violence. I'll put up chapter-specific warnings where warranted, and also so you know where to get pr0nz!

I feel the need to point out at the outset that this is a first-person narrative that tries to be true to Brigitte's views. That doesn't mean that I, the author, agree with her opinions. As much as I adore her character, she is still High General Abbendis, and she still does some pretty awful stuff. So, you know, this is me, disclaiming Brigitte's bad attitude, bad ethics and any bad results you get from imitating them! I definitely recommend getting with Sally Whitemane counterparts though.

Also, spoilers for _Ashbringer_. But WoW is one giant sugar-coated spoiler pill anyway.

Chapter: 1/6

* * *

><p>Fire sears in my skin.<br>I see nothing. My ears ring.  
>Sweat beads my back.<br>Pale as grass in winter, I tremble,  
>lost and dying.<p>

-Sappho

* * *

><p><strong>I<strong>

They say that if you seek to find the Light, you need only look around you.

Presumably 'they' are not standing in Northrend, as I am.

In the winter here the sun scarcely rises over the horizon even at midday, turning the land to the dim blue of semi-twilight. The ice deepens to amethyst; we lunch in near darkness, bent like children at prayer, huddled together for warmth. The wood of the benches creaks occasionally, the wind screeching through the cracks in the masonry, but there is little talk. Silence is fitting.

I actually do eat with my men, sometimes, elbow-to-elbow with the soldiers in the mess. More and more I have wanted to be alone, though, and I sup in my office, sleep in my office, pray in my office. Outside my window the world is almost beautiful. No: it is beautiful. I lower my pen from my journal and turn towards the scene, peering at the dark dawn of afternoon, the sunlight dimmer than the fire that roars in my grate. I think, irresistibly, of Sally Whitemane, of her hair like white frost. I think of her bone-pale hands.

"You seem vexed, High General," Admiral Westwind says. His voice is gentle, mellifluous, but it cuts through my thoughts like a scythe. Always with him I feel as though I am being called to account for something, though I cannot say what.

"No. It's nothing." I shiver despite the warmth of the fire and long for my fur-lined cloak. "I wasn't…" I don't know quite what to say. I'd expected things to be rotten. Black soil, open graves. It seems a child's folly. I lean forwards in my chair and crane my neck to see around the ornate stained glass. "Sometimes I forget the land is dead."

He inclines his head to show he understands. It is one of the reasons I do not resent him more, his understanding. Strengthened, I resolve to tell my men that the Light teaches us a lesson here, that even evil can present a gorgeous face with all the trappings of glory. It will frighten them into vigilance, and fear will steel their hearts.

What? I go too far?

But you know nothing—nothing—of us, of what we fight. If you had seen what I have seen, if you had seen Lordaeron as it burned, the sky grey and orange shadows, if you had seen my father dying as he did—in my arms, chest bloodied, face a mask of what he was—you would understand that no step is a step beyond morality.

Sally understood that, maybe even better than I did. I could not have cared for her if she hadn't.

* * *

><p>I met High Inquisitor Whitemane again after our extended parting the day my father died.<p>

I think I must have cried for ten minutes when he fell, slumping into my arms like a child. Then suddenly I had no more tears. It was as if I'd stepped into a nightmare where everything had a frightful unreality and nothing had content. Shapes were moving. There were colours, shouting, the clamour of hooves on tiles. In the distance, faintly, I could smell wood burning.

"Sister Abbendis," Arcanist Doan was saying, calling me out of my dream world. "Sister Abbendis, please!"

The impossibility of my situation dawned on me. I stood, suddenly light-headed. "Take me to the Grand Crusader."

Arcanist Doan stood before me, hunched, wringing his hands. _Old woman Doan, _my father had often called him, and with a rush of scorn I thought the name rang true. "He is with Inquisitor Whitemane and Highlord Fordring, milady. I came to tell you, I think it best if—"

I turned on him, drawing my shoulders back and raising my chin a little to stare him down. I must have looked dreadful, wounded, deranged. Haggard. "Did you not hear me, Doan? I will see Dathrohan, and I will see him this instant."

He looked away. "As you will, milady."

Isillien, still kneeling at my father's side, gave me a look that was between wonder and pity and reproach. "Go to him, then. I will stay with Abbendis."

I did not say, _I am Abbendis now_, though had he been almost anyone else I would have. There was bitter strength in him, and against it all my angry fire fizzled to stillness. With Isillien I never took such liberties as losing my temper. I feared very few people, but I did fear him.

Arcanist Doan attempted to speak to me as I walked, but a single sharp word and he fell silent, abashed. Lovesick fool. I pity him a little now, but then I could find only contempt in my heart.

They were standing at the gates of the city, heads together—Taelan Fordring and Saidan Dathrohan and High Inquisitor Whitemane. Dathrohan was a head taller than her and twice her width at the shoulders, as big as a bear and more than as fierce. But she was the one I looked at, dressed like a barbarian priestess rather than a Mother of the Light's Faith, her long legs bare and completely unbloodied. She rested one of her feet on a pile of corpses, elbows perched on her knee. The effect was barely decent—even shell-shocked and numb with grief I noticed that.

"Brigitte!" Taelan called when he saw us. "Brigitte, is it true? Is the General really—?"

"Dead." The word sounded flat as I said it, and I can only imagine that I too was expressionless. "Yes."

There was a moment of shocked silence. Taelan looked away, but Sally turned her gaze on me, bright and red, as unreflective as solid stone.

"Do not be grieved, child." Dathrohan placed a huge hand around my shoulder as I approached, practically engulfing me. I hated paternal displays from old men—my father never shamed me with public affection, and that the Grand Crusader did filled me with senseless fury. I stiffened, but he did not pull away. "The High General perished a hero for the Crusade, and his soul will find peace in the hereafter."

He was in remarkably high spirits for some reason, I could tell, but he made the effort to be somber for my sake.

"Where is the body?" Fordring said suddenly. "It needs to be burned immediately. The Scourge would count it a feather in their caps to have Abbendis as one of theirs."

I could not resist this time. "Abbendis is right here. _Father _has Grand Inquisitor Isillien with him. Or is that not good enough for you?"

Sally smiled.

As suddenly as it had come, Dathrohan's grip on me was loosed. I staggered a little, my shoulder armour clanging against the steel of his plate. When I looked up at him I thought, for the briefest of moments, that I saw a shadow pass behind his eyes—something dark, something that turned the marrow of my bones to ice. And then the moment passed. "And so you came, and Isillien stayed, did he? Well."

I stared up at him, shaken, and as always I felt my confusion turning into anger. But Sally saved me the trouble of responding.

"This is not the place for a deliberation on leadership." She was not looking at me, had not spoken directly to me since I'd appeared. "If the High General is dead it would be well-advised for us to confer with the Grand Inquisitor, lord."

For some reason, the word—'dead'—cut me more deeply when she said it than when I did.

"Oh," Dathrohan said, looking down at me with an unreadable expression on his face, "I think you'll find the High General is very much alive and well, Sally."

I understood Isillien's icy anger in that moment. Unwittingly I had made the manoeuvre to step into my father's epaulets, take up his mantle. This without thinking, and yet—and yet how I must look to them, standing there, covered in the blood of the only person I had ever loved, the only person who had loved me, playing power games.

And somewhere, beneath my disbelief and horror, I thought, _Good. Let them think me heartless. They will respect me more for it._

* * *

><p>My father's bones should have been stripped of their flesh and meat by his brothers in the Light before being transferred to Lordaeron's catacombs, but times had changed and that honour could no longer be afforded even to a hero of the Crusade.<p>

We burned his body there in Hearthglen, out in the open streets, beneath a sky the colour of a putrefied wound. We must have stunk half the remaining citizens out of their homes. No matter. Hearthglen was a town of warriors as much as refugees, and all who lived there knew it. It was a small price to pay for safety.

He should have been bathed in rosewater, slowly and carefully, his limbs anointed with smudges of charcoal, his forehead painted with the Light's Spear in true gold ink. A million impossible things. In Lordaeron when the high-ranking clergymen and paladins died their funerals showed the greatest possible pomp and ceremony. Tabards sewn with real silver thread, wakes that lasted weeks, obligatory mourning, hours of prayer. Death was sorrowful, but it was also a time of joy and celebration, of feasting, laughter, remembering.

Father would have none of that. The best I could do was sit beside him, his great hand in my smaller one. The fingers were too cold and stiff to bend. When I'd been very young he would tickle me, and I would shriek and squirm and laugh.

"I do not see the need for this rush," Sally said to Taelan, as if I had not been there. "Surely he would have risen by now, if the plague had contaminated him."

I felt his eyes on me as he said, "Inquisitor Whitemane, please, _hush_." You could practically hear him blushing. And Sally, wonder of wonders, did fall silent.

It took hours for the workers and low-ranking grunts to gather enough spare wood and dry branches to build the pyre, forming a bed of torn planks and wall panels and building up on top of it a pyramid of rushes, twigs, leaves, bound together with twine. Nobody asked for my assistance; I don't think I could have given it. My power had been utterly spent on that meeting and now, the cold weight of father's body leaning against my knee, I could barely breathe. I ached to weep, sure that if I could tear my hair and keen some of the horrible pressure in my chest would ease. But the most I could muster was a blurring in my eyes, a sting. I wondered if I was dehydrated.

"I can say the Light's Prayer, if it will comfort you."

I closed my eyes for a moment and turned. Sally stood over me, her face as impassive as ever, not a hint of pity touching her beautiful lips. But nor was there malice, nor mockery, nor scorn. There was simply… nothing. Like a doll come to life, breath without human feeling.

"I don't need your comfort." I turned back to my father.

She stayed for a moment, hovering over us silently. Did she grieve with me? Did she want to say something else, something that would help me, at least a little? I cannot know. I never knew, with her.

"As you will," she said. I heard her retreating footsteps behind my back.

It was full night by the time the wood was ready for the fire. Dathrohan, Isillien, Taelan and Doan carried him to it; Fordring looked so young amidst all these venerable men, so clearly moved by the honour of bearing the late High General that I felt a twinge of sadness for him, this boy I so often scorned who had no father of his own. Isillien came to stand by my side as the others arrayed my father's arms and legs; someone had closed his eyes earlier, before the death stiffness set in. He might have looked like he was sleeping, as they say, were it not for the dark, rusty stain that showed even through his tabard. Then Dathrohan said something ponderous and sombre, I do not know what, I was not listening, and Arcanist Doan set the whole thing to burning with a flick of his hands. The fire bloomed with a roar, catching the wood, father's hair, the cloak that mother had given to him years before I was born and he'd had all along, the tabard of the Crusade. Even in death, he was who he was.

"This is a terrible loss," Taelan said when he re-joined me, and I snuck a look at him, ready to hate him for his hypocrisy. Impossible. He seemed genuinely aggrieved. How curious.

Grand Inquisitor Isillien said the Holy Valediction—I remember it so well, standing there, unable to cry, watching as the threads of fire moved over my father's skin. How had he remembered it all, all those words in High Common, hours of them, and so well he could say it with true loss? It was beautiful, the conflagration and the prayer. Isillien had a voice to make a demon weep. The heat made my face burn, even at that distance, like the lash of a scourge. He had been my father's confidante, and at parts his voice caught and broke. Once, when he looked at the pyre, I thought I saw his eyes shining with unshed tears.

Does that surprise you? Isillien was my father's dearest friend, and he loved my father as well as he could, being what he was.

_Hate me_, I thought, _if you must. But I loved him too._

It must have been close to dawn when the fire died down, when Isillien's hoarse voice faded to silence, when all that was left of my father was ash. I had not seen Sally Whitemane throughout, but in the light of the cinders I could make out her figure, tall and shapely and moving towards me.

"High General," Sally said by way of greeting. She didn't look at me but at some point on the horizon.

"Not yet, Whitemane." I spat her name, channelling all the hatred and fear I felt in that moment. "Too bad, isn't it? Well, I'm sure there's someone else for you to flatter."

I had startled her with my anger, I could tell. Now, finally, she turned those red eyes towards me, as if I were an insect under glass for her to inspect. The flickering light made her beauty monstrous, distorted. "Sister Abbendis, I merely wanted to give you my condolences."

"Consider them given."

If she heard the barb in my voice she ignored it. "I feel the loss of the late High General, as will all the Crusade. He was quite talented."

"It's amazing," I said, "to think you're capable of feeling anything at all."

She raised her pale eyebrows. "Considering how little you know me, Sister, I would think it wiser not to make those sorts of judgements."

In response I turned away, dismissing her. But she didn't leave. She put her gloved hand on my back, between my shoulder blades, the lightest touch. I felt her fingers like the prick of a barb, a strike of electricity, holding me in place. My muscles tensed, to flee or to linger I do not know. We stayed like that for an interminable amount of time, frozen in place, bound together by something darker than a common cause, and I thought of that day in the library, when the sun had come in through the windows and turned her skin to pearl, and her eyes had been seas without bottom.

She released me. Only then did she leave.

* * *

><p>I sleep badly in Northrend, I confess it. But I never slept particularly well after Arthas Kinslayer tossed aside one crown in favour of another. It's just been a matter of restless dreams being better or worse. They were better in Lordaeron; they're worse here.<p>

It might have something to do with the fact that I left an entire town of men and women, warriors and workers, _children_, to die at the feet of a Scourge necropolis while I traipsed off to Northrend. Oh so bravely. The strong arm of the Crusade indeed.

I have dreamt of nothing but death, of corpses and graves and bones and worse, since I set off on this mission. Sometimes the Light speaks to me in warnings, showing me images of what will befall Azeroth if I waver, but more often I think that the nightmares are coming from within me, within my own head, so lurid they make me wonder what sort of woman I am underneath everything to be thinking these things.

As always, I dream of New Avalon.

I see my men now, standing in the common room at the town hall, drawing up a plan of defense with the villagers. They are organising watches—they will have light on the street at all times. Helpless fools, frightened as children, thinking mother and daylight can chase away shadows. It will be only for your piece of mind. Torches cannot frighten the walking dead.

I can see the map. I can read the street names, see the grid, and, in impeccable handwriting, the people and the times of their watches. I feel a surge of maternal pride at the Guard-Captain's diligence even as my insides writhe with shame.

And I know it, then. This cannot be a dream. Dreams are not so well-ordered, so detailed. And with that: dread. Because I know what is coming.

Yes. The scene changes. I have a panorama of the entire Enclave: New Avalon, the farms, now burning and barren, the empty mine shafts where the workers, good honest men, were turned to undeath. I see the bay where our ships were burned; I see the defaced monument to my father. With my privileged perspective I see the riders before the guards do, a line of them, their chargers as black as the hills framing them, save for where their bones gleam wetly.

It is too dark for the watch to detect the assault. I see a pair of guards pause for a moment at the gates, and one shifts, squinting into the darkness, catching the flash of metal, a gauntlet or a blade, but she shakes her head and turns away.

Floating above the pair I am shaking, I want to reach out, to point, but I am still and distant and infinitely absent. I can't touch them, either of them. Powerless to move, powerless to speak, powerless to even look away.

Then the line of the Lich King's soldiers bursts into the light and they turn so slowly, agonisingly slowly, and of course the first knight raises his sword and cuts them down, carving through the woman's plate like crepe, but even though I am screaming silently that is not why. I know them, all of them: everyone I have ever known and cared for, in the colours of the Scourge—blue-black saronite and smoking silver and red and grey, the same grey as their flesh. I see Isillien, arms jerking loose in their sockets; where his hands grasp the reins of his charger you can see his fingers, the joints jutting through the skin, and the gaping, unhealed sores from where his fingernails were torn out. Taelan Fordring, united with his disgraced father in death; the brothers Mograine, their beautiful faces distorted and ruined, stitches bulging at Renault's throat where his head has been reattached. I see my father—I want to sob and I can't—his lips cracked, his eyes sunken and yet brilliant, too brilliant. When he moves to lift his sword the slash across the chestguard of his armour spurts blood.

And Sally.

She looks up at me, and I down at her. Her eyes are no longer red—they are blue, blue as frost, and the skin around them so pale I can see the veins, still and black. She is wearing her priestess's robes, but they are tattered and stiff with blood and filth, drenched in it just like the rest of her. Her hair is matted against her head, more like dishwater than snow. With one hand she grips the reins of her mount. With the other she clutches her stomach; I try to turn my head away but the thing in me forces me to see. The skin of her midsection has been flayed away, strip by strip, peeled off and left to hang like shreds of rubber.

She crooks her finger, more a spasm than a gesture, and I want to recoil but I _can't_. Hands I don't remember having, lift; my arms are moving, which is remarkable because I cannot feel them. Now I understand. I have not been floating above the scene. I have been there, in body, all along. The same as them.

I don't want to look, knowing, dreading what I am going to see. Perhaps not seeing will make it unreal, easier to bear. But I look anyway, my marionette's head tilting down. My hands are the colour of chalk, the flesh burned and peeling away. Through the gaps in my blackened leg guards I can see my skin is charred black, and when I dig my heels into my charger—why? Why am I doing that?—I see a pale shadow that can only be bone. The gold has melted and dripped off my gauntlets and hardened into veins on my legs, my torso, my hips, tearing gouges in the meat of my body when I move. I feel no pain, nothing, only horror. The bile should be rising in my throat. It isn't.

Then I notice: I am still wearing the tabard of the Crusade, the holy crimson flame that will light the world and burn undeath to ash. It's in immaculate condition. The Lich King has a sense of irony. Imagine that.

My horse flees down the hillside under my commands, but I am doing nothing, struggling against him in vain. For all my turmoil I don't even feel the twitch of a muscle. I am a passenger inside my body, driven by something I cannot fight. Our pace is relentless. My heart would be pounding, only it doesn't beat at all.

I pray, desperately, begging the Light for salvation, for mercy, for the oblivion of true death. Let this nightmare steed break a leg. Let us fall. Let the defenders overcome us.

(They won't. They couldn't when we lived. How could they now?)

_You will learn as they have, _He whispers. I don't need to wonder. I know who.

I cannot feel the Light. It will not come. I hear His call again and my hand, acting without my input, closes around the hilt of my icy sword. The lights of New Avalon dance before me. The gates shine, my charger's saronite muzzle shines. My blade shines even in the darkness, bright blue, but the shadows are so deep that I cannot see, I cannot move, I cannot even breath, and the Light will never reach me here, never again will it touch this ground—

The cry that shatters the silence is my own. I awake. For a moment I lie in bed, panting and sweating, blinking into the darkness, blind.

I sit up and shake myself. "It's not real," I say aloud. My mouth is moving normally. I can hear the click of my grandfather clock and, in my peripheral vision, I see the glow from my grate, the fire low but still lit. There is no light in Acherus, no warmth. There couldn't be, could there?

I toss the covers off me, shaking and disgusted with myself for it. Of course it was a dream—I knew that while I was in it. But there is wisdom in dreams; there is truth. Alonsus Faol saw the fall of Stormwind in a dream. Have I just seen the fall of the Crusade?

Outside my door, my squire snaps to attention as soon as I appear.

"Call for Admiral Westwind. Immediately."

He gives me a startled look, but the speed with which he obeys surprises even me.

I slink back to my bedchambers; knowing that I will be unable to sleep I throw myself into my armchair, staring into the fireplace. _Brooding_, my father would have said with unmistakeable reproach. I know I am brooding. I know I look a mess with my crimson dressing gown, too big for me so that it swallows my arms, and my worn wool socks that might have been white once-upon-a-time, and my snarl of hair. I do not care.

A knock sounds at my door a few moments later, loud and urgent.

"Enter," I say, not looking up.

Westwind enters; I can hear his boots on the hardwood. I do not rise to greet him, not at this hour. It is so late that any semblance of formality would seem superfluous, bizarre. Calling on him in the middle of the night is a breach of conduct as it stands.

"Thank you for coming," I say.

"Of course." There is a pause, and I do not like the feel of it. I am right. "Brigitte," he says, "that was perhaps not prudent."

I look up at him, all gleaming black mustachios and ivory skin and his magnificent decorated barrel of a chest. At the back of my mind I feel a strange unease at the fact that he is fully dressed. I push it away. "What?"

He sits down opposite me, his eyes never leaving my face. His hands when he grasps my own seem to burn like a furnace, and I wonder whether he is sick, and then I wonder whether I am sick. "Sending your squire for me in the middle of the night, dressed only in your dressing gown…" He clears his throat, and to my surprise I think I see the start of a blush on his pale cheeks. "Forgive me, I mean nothing by this, but they are men, Brigitte, and they will assume—if only out of jealousy… You are a beautiful woman still, and..."

"I'm sorry?" I stare at him, uncomprehending.

"Child, how does it look to summon your closest advisor, your confidante, with whom you spend all your time, in a mad rush and it so late?"

It looks—oh. He means they'll think we're—oh. I bury my head in my hands. "I didn't even think of that—I just… Of course you're right." As usual.

"Never mind," he says gently, "I am here now. Why did you call for me in such a panic, at such an unholy hour?"

I feel acutely stupid after the complete disaster I have made of this night, the miscalculation and naivete I have shown. The reality of what I have just done to myself seems to crash in like a collapsing roof, giving out under the weight of snow. And for what? A few scary images in my sleep? I am worse than a child.

But even as I think that, I remember the way Isillien's fingers scrabbled at the bones of his charger's neck, the way Sally held her flayed skin to her body, desperately. I close my eyes but that is even worse—the memory is so fresh, the red of blood and grey of organs, and behind it all the echoing call of Arthas Kinslayer, calling me to battle and to death and to his service.

Or was it the Lich King? I suddenly cannot remember.

"I had a nightmare." I sink into my fur wrap, avoiding his eyes. "A very vivid nightmare."

He doesn't seem at all surprised. His eyes are blue, ice blue, so pale they are nearly the same colour as the whites around them. "Tell me," he says.

I do tell him. The words come out slowly, with great difficulty. My mouth seems ungainly around them. And yet as I speak the images fade and distort, and I am left grasping at them, trying to piece together what it was that happened, what it was that was so horrific. I am losing threads and scraps, rambling like a little fool. My voice trails away to nothing, and my face is hot with something more than the fire's glow. A wasted chance. When have I ever had trouble speaking?

But Westwind regards me coolly, his face betraying no scorn. "It is a fearsome thing," he says at last.

"The dream?" I tighten the sash of my robes and withdraw my hands into the sleeves.

"No. Your fate."

Though spasm of pain passes through me, I will not look away. We stare at each other, and concealed within the frankness of two friends talking there is something that makes my hair stand on end. Does he sense that I do not entirely trust him? And yet I invited him here, to my private chambers, where I sit, unarmed and nearly naked before him with my guards far away.

"You have such a great burden to bear, and so young." He reaches out to stroke my cheek and I lean into it despite myself, closing my eyes. "Of course it is understandable that the stress would get to you. You drive yourself so hard."

I look up at him, this ox of a man. His face is gentle, just like my father's, and I want him to be like my father, but there is always this nagging tug inside me. His eyes are so cold, and his voice—why does his voice make me tremble and cower, my mind fading to a blank?

"Trust me, Brigitte," he says, as if he can read my thoughts. "You can, you know."

"Trust you?" I feel dazed, suddenly. I stare up at him, at his hard glacial eyes. "I—"

"Need someone to rely on." He takes my hand, holding my fingers so tightly in his it almost hurts. "Trust me. Confide in me. You are strong, and you can bear this burden."

He lets my hand go without warning and I almost cry out as feeling returns to my fingers. When he moves to stand before the fire his enormous frame blocks the light, and I am left sitting in his shadow, suddenly cold.

"But not alone, Brigitte. Not alone."

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I've taken a few mild liberties with canon here and elsewhere. For example, I believe Saidan Dathrohan was with Brigitte when her dad died. But I'm sure you'll forgive me for something so minor, right, lovely reader?<p>

Thanks, as ever, for tuning in. The next chapter is prepared and awaits editing. But, well, we all know how easy _that _is. Expect it early next week!


	2. Chapter 2

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Thanks to **Dusty the Umbravita, ChildrenoftheNovadawn**,and** Demon-Something** for the reviews! You guys rule! High fives for everyone!

Warning(s): This chapter contains child abuse as well as oblique references to torture. And, of course, implied f/f. But I'm sure you knew that part, gentle reader.

Chapter: 2/6

* * *

><p><strong>II<strong>

Sally Whitemane was the youngest ever of our order to achieve the rank of High Inquisitor.

I do not know whether Whitemane was her family name, though I doubt it now—the name was too apposite to be an accident. Her hair was the colour of snow, and so was her skin, both as smooth and unmarred as first frost. But her eyes were red, and they were strange to me. _She_ was strange to me—eight years my senior, a barbarian warrior priestess from the north, white and red like blood on ice, beautiful and awful. Her every movement was controlled, as if she willed each act however minor: each blink, each breath had all the meaning of prayer.

When she came to us she was a woman of twenty-five, tall and gorgeous and troubled as she would ever be. Standing in the resanctified cathedral of Light I stared at her, at the way her hair held all the colours of the stained glass as sunlight poured in, at the shadows beneath her eyes, the shadow behind them. She went to her knees and she kissed the steel toes of my father's boots. Her lips were like flower petals, I remember—soft against the metal. But she stared ahead at the ground, unseeing.

"Rise."

She rose.

"Sarah Rose Whitemane, do you swear to serve as the Light's obedient slave, never faltering, never wavering in your duties? Do you swear to be the right arm of the Crusade in its struggle against the desecration of undeath, and the left arm of the Crusade in its duties to that end? Do you swear to obey without question, to serve without question, to die without question?"

Every eye was on her, every breath baited, every one of us wondering whether she would falter. If she faltered, she would die. So it had been and was for all of us.

"Before the Light and before all those present, I do so swear."

"Then stand, and by the flame of the Light, be purified."

The holy cleansing flare is like no light that can be found in nature. It is at once lash and caress, brand and weal, the ram that batters and the heart that opens. The Light is all things, and all things are in the Light. That does not mean that all things are equal before it—or that all things can withstand its righteousness.

But we of the Crusade, we have ever been its steadfast children, and the flame that flooded the Cathedral made me burn with an ache that was more pleasure than pain. The pull of it seemed to move along my spine, stretching all the vertebrae, stretching, stretching, until I was sure that I was being rent. I saw one of the lesser acolytes shield his eyes, a dangerous presumption—he would be called to account for it, later.

And then the brilliance ebbed away, and I was left blinking, blind, into the darkness.

My father's voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. "The Light has judged you and found you adequate to its ends. You will be given lodging, armor, and a sword. Prove your strength, and you will rise. Be welcome, sister." My vision was coming back, and I saw him smile—so rare was that smile, like the sun breaking over Scourge works, striking and forbidding. "And be safe, child."

I glanced at her as I followed my father out. She was staring at the scarlet cross of the Crusade hanging above the altar. Her face was smooth and expressionless save for her mouth, which was twisted into a grimace. I averted my eyes, carefully unseeing. Such emotions embarrassed me.

I know, now, what that look meant; I know what it betokened—it was the look of a woman steeling herself for what she knows must come. But at the time I could not decode that secret language of expressions, and I did not know her. Perhaps if I had things might have turned out differently. I still wonder. Yet I find I can regret nothing.

* * *

><p>I lingered by the entrance to the Cathedral, staring out over the sepia ruin-scape that had become Lordaeron. Behind me, I heard the sigh of carpet beneath cloth slippers. It seemed Sally had resigned herself to whatever it was she'd needing resigning to.<p>

I remember that moment so clearly. I was leaning against the door, tossing an apple from hand to hand, and I looked over my shoulder at her. Sally came down the stairs, head held high, and I was struck by the length and smoothness of her legs in her robes, the way the muscles stretched against the fabric, the way her gaze slid over everything as if she were seeing the world, appraising the world, rejecting the world.

"Sarah Rose Whitemane," I said. I tasted every syllable, and even now I flush to think of the way I spoke it, like I was swishing wine across my palate. "Quite the name."

She looked up and met my gaze without a blush, without so much as a nervous smile. "Sa'ara was a queen of the human tribes and damned by the love of men. Her husband cursed her with the form of a deer. It's quite the name indeed."

Incredulous, amazed by the seriousness with which she delivered this little speech, and in part to hide my own sudden misgivings, I smiled at her. And do you know what? She smiled back. Sally Whitemane's smile: rarer than diamonds, and twice as dazzling.

"Do you have a nickname, o queen of women?"

"No."

I tossed her my apple and she caught it with deft hands. This one would be no burden to our Cause through lack of skill, at least. "Well, Sally, you do now. I hope you enjoy killing Scourge."

"It is my duty. If one enjoys something, they do it for pleasure, not duty. This is my moral function."

I stared at her for a moment. "For my part, I say there's nothing wrong with finding joy in doing good."

"Joy?" There was a hint of amusement in her. As I said: I was eight years her junior. And yet even then, even when I was so young, there was an edge to her humour with me, an edge of honed steel that bit. "Oh, not joy, sister."

"Pride, then. Satisfaction."

She ignored this, dismissive as a cat batting flies away. "You are Brigitte Abbendis. The High General's daughter."

"And a general in my own right." I drew my sword and showed it to her. The steel gleamed dark grey in the light, showing the red of the carpets and curtains and our clothing like spots of blood. "This is my sword, White Morning. I had another, but I notched the grip so many times it fell to pieces, and it was cheaper to take another than have that one rebalanced and repaired. I have killed more undead than I can count, and I am just seventeen."

She looked at my face. I saw it, then, and I think that at the time I knew it: a shadow of the woman she was to become. "I have killed only once. But he was alive."

For a moment she looked older than her age, and so distant, so detached that my heart stirred, and then I was uncomfortable, feeling as if a splinter had stabbed me to the bone. I sheathed my sword and clapped her on the back. "When you prove yourself, you'll get a staff and blade, and we'll carve that one in together."

I said this because I did not know what else to say. But even stupidity can be lucky: it was the right promise to seal our friendship.

* * *

><p>My father, early on, tried to protect me from the realities of what the Crusade did. And so for a long time I could not know who, precisely, the beautiful Sally Whitemane was.<p>

The Crusade's right arm was the arm that held the staff and the sword, the arm that mowed down the legions of the Scourge and returned them to the Light's judgement. Paladins, crusaders, warriors, archers, war-priests. We were a machine built with a single purpose: the extermination of undeath.

But the left arm did its duties on a far smaller scale, and if you didn't know, you might have thought it a doctor's. Scalpels, needles, lye, scissors, hot-irons—those were the tools of its trade. There is a reason every single high-ranking Inquisitor of the Crusade is a priest. The blade that heals and the blade that harms are one and the same, and the boundary is as fine as Sally's hair.

It takes a certain spirit to be a torturer. My father didn't have it, and neither do I. But Sally did—Dathrohan Saidan saw it in her. That was why she was chosen and groomed to do the necessary work, he said. Because she was born to do it.

(I used to believe that, and to tell myself, "It's the seed that grows into a noxious, choking root. It was in her; it was not in me." But now I know that that's a convenient lie—it is the crack that grows into a crevasse, a wound that never heals. And the wound was in each of us.

Could she have been other than what she was, if someone else had found her first? Could she have truly been the gentle physician I glimpsed once or twice in those early days, her face distorted with something deeper than horror, twisted and distorted all over like fire-bent glass? Mograine or Fordring the elder—would they have saved her?

But no—this is treason. I am thinking mad things.)

"What do you do with Father Isillien?" I asked her one day when we met on the grounds. She was coming up from the dungeons, and her hands stank of cleaning solution, and her eyes were vacant.

"I serve the Light." She left without looking at me.

And so she did, so she did. But not always with such grace, such dedication.

* * *

><p>I found out much later that Sally had served as a house physician in the service of a major Lordaeron nobleman. It was also her job to ferret secrets out of his ascendant relatives, gently if possible and, if not, using her rather unique abilities. The Light gifts all humans, from the small to the great, with at least one talent. Sally's was a talent for pain, an intuitive understanding of the human body and its weak spots, its pressure points. In happier times she'd doubtless have been the Royal Physician. She was that brilliant.<p>

But whatever it was her little nobleman had her doing, it was nothing compared to what she did with Isillien.

The morning of their first real investigation together. Sally Whitemane was throwing up profusely in the outhouse. Father was not impressed.

"She held together when that atrocity of an abomination tore apart our damn company, and she breaks down over this?"

"Not everyone has the strength of a warrior, father," I said. "Some are brave and some are cowards, and sometimes some are both." What I did not say aloud was: I wonder what sort of woman it is, who thinks nothing of the shamble and reek of undeath but falls apart at the tools of the Inquisition. I wonder what the tools of the Inquisition are, that such a woman falls apart.

"You think I don't know that?" He softened as soon as the words were out and ruffled my hair. "Oh, Brigitte. You are right."

His callouses caught and pulled a few strands as he withdrew his hand. I grit my teeth against his touch then, thinking it an indignity; maybe it was. I long for the indignity now that he is dead.

"Go to her, would you?" he said. "We can't afford to lose her. She's got promise."

Little did you know, beloved father.

I went to her, miffed at being tasked with a project so far beneath me: tending to a weak-stomached crusader.

"If you plan to occupy this place all day, at least put up a sign," I said, leaning against the frame of the door. "You're not the only person here, or have you forgotten?"

She stopped voiding her stomach long enough to look up at me, her face paler than usual. "Go away. Or shut up."

"Are those my choices?" I asked, but she didn't answer because she was retching again. I stood there for a long moment, watching her, seized with indecision—what was I supposed to do in this situation? Hold her hand or her hair? Drag her away? Call for the priest? She _was_ the priest.

Then I had a thought. "Hey," I said, touching her shoulder. She leaned back on her haunches to stare at me, wiping a thin trickle of vomit from her chin. "Here." I handed her a flask from my pack and she took it as if I'd offered her a live shell, touching it as little as possible. "It's fire-cordial, to get the breath of life back in you." And realising how insensitive my words were, how dangerous in the atmosphere of the Crusade, I tightened my jaw and said, "It will calm your nerves."

She unscrewed it and took a few sips, looking for all the world like a lady tasting her tea. For a moment I thought she would urge again and all my alcohol would be wasted, but she kept it down. She watched me as she took a second drink, longer than the first. When she lowered it from her lips she took a deep breath, her chest rising with it. I of course looked away, well-raised lass I was.

"Better," she said, and handed it back. Some of the colour had returned to her face—what little colour it ever had, I mean.

"You're welcome to it." I looked meaningfully at the smeared top, expecting her to blush and apologise for her rudeness, but she did nothing of the sort. Her red gaze pinned me in place, like a moth caught on a wall. For a moment I hated my father for sending me here to this madwoman who could not be forced to act like a normal human being, but then she shrugged and pocketed it. Needless to say, she did not offer to help me up, so I stood myself.

"I do not see any need to remain in this place," she said. And then she turned on her heel and marched out of there, as graceful and haughty as a queen, and certainly not like the green-faced girl who'd been cowering on the floor moments before.

I stared at her back as I followed. "Was that a joke, Sister Whitemane?"

My reward was a thin chuckle. "Do you find something funny about this, 'Sister' Abbendis?"

Even now, I flinch at the way she spat my name.

I trailed her all the way to the complex. My father had tasked me with returning her to her duties; I'd be content with nothing less. When we reached the Cathedral, however, she seemed to recall me.

"You may leave, Sister," she said, stopping and turning to face me. "I am fit to resume my work."

"You know, a 'thank you' might be appropriate," I said.

She stared at me, and, as usual, my temper flared.

"It's usually good form to thank someone for doing something for you." I pointed at the shape of the flask in the leather pack she wore around her waist. "I'll have to get a new one."

She arched her eyebrows at me, nothing at all like she'd been before—that had been a glimpse, I realised, of something that she did not often let out, something that was not often her. And now she did not understand me, or herself, I think.

"Never mind," I mumbled.

"Give Father Isillien my regards and apologies," she said by way of farewell.

I couldn't bear the curiosity any longer; I forced myself to raise my head and look her in the eyes, planting my feet a distance apart. An aggressive, hostile stance.

"What were you and Father Isillien doing that made you sick?"

I expected her to get angry, defensive, to rebuke me for having the gall to bring it up. Instead she simply looked at me, expressionless, as cold and still as ever. She had shown me weakness, and now it was locked away. My chance to know her was over.

"That is not your concern," she said. I bristled, expecting a lecture, but she just inclined her head slightly and said, "Walk in the Light, Sister Abbendis."

After she left I paced the grounds for a while longer, aflame with frustration. The heat of the Plaguelands is always intense, even now, just as it never was in Lordaeron. The oak I stood under was dying, its leaves mottled like lace and browning, and it offered scant protection from the sun.

I was a Crusader, I had killed, I had risked my life on the most dangerous missions; I had been torn by abominations' hooks, rent by necromantic spells, cut by geists' nails. And still my father did not believe it appropriate for me to attend to the investigations. "You're too young," he said, softening for a brief, rare moment. Sometimes he would kiss my forehead. "I'm sorry, Brig. There's time for horror when you're grown."

It had never rankled me before; dull talk and questions had no appeal. They never had. I was a woman of action, I preferred a sword to a penetrating silence, and I did not want to sit in cells, bludgeoning prisoners with queries until they broke under the pressure and let lose their torrents of secrets. And yet I was of the Crusade, my blood to be spilt in the Light's name at the slightest cause, my life no longer my own. I served a greater power, and I knew it, and so did he. I determined that I would know what Isillien did down there, in his subterranean kingdom.

_There's time for horror when you're grown_.

* * *

><p>"Absolutely not," Brother Jordan says. His hands are folded across his lap and he sits so rigidly he looks to break at the slightest prod.<p>

Outside the window of my office the ice gleams like a mirror, a sudden ray of sunlight arcing off the water into my eyes. I look away, at the far wall, where my father's portrait hangs. It's not a masterpiece by any standard—hastily done, more a sketch than a real work of art. Still, the likeness is unmistakeable: the craggy lines, the pockmarks, the scars, and above all that gaze, like a bolt, like an arrow, penned in in pale brown.

Remembering my dream of the night before I avert my eyes; I am distracted and tired, and yet Westwind, who could have gotten no more sleep than I, is alert at my side. He stares down at Jordan with distant compassion. "It must be done, child."

Jordan looks at me, imploring silently. I do not look away, but nor do I speak against Westwind. "Brother Jordan, you have been the Crusade's loyal servant. This is entirely necessary. You must see that."

For a long moment he is silent, and I dare to hope that he will acquiesce with minimal trouble. But it is not to be. His shoulders slump, as if I have thrown the weight of the world upon him, and he stares up at me with wide, bewildered eyes. "Do you think this is what the Crusade is about? Whispering, sneaking around? Turning against the people who serve you? Spies in the barracks, informants?" I narrow my eyes in warning, but he only leans in further. "_Random interrogations, _Brigitte?"

"Questioning," I say, but I dig my nails into the leather of my chair. "Random questioning. For our security."

He snorts. "With LeCraft? Don't lie to me."

I flare at his tone, the mockery and contempt and sacrilegious _doubt_. "Damn you, Jordan, what choice do we have? There are undead spies everywhere, and their sympathisers have infiltrated the compound. We could be sabotaged and never see it coming." I give a shudder I cannot hide—Northrend is not a land forgiving of errors.

Westwind says, "If we'd just sealed the gates against non-humans, as I'd ordered—"

"We need the trade," Jordan says. He stares at me, scrutinising my face, looking for a point of weakness. I will show none. "Surely you trust the Alliance, Brigitte?"

Silence. My father stares down at me. I cannot tell whether he is approving or not. At last I say, softly, "I do not trust those who have turned their faces away from us when we most needed them."

"Oh, High General. They're men, like us—"

"No," I say, and Jordan recoils, "no, they are _not_ just like us. They allied with heathens and criminals. They traipse around with the monsters when it suits them and they hide up in Dalaran and Stormwind, letting us suffer and die and then damning us for it."

Westwind is nodding along with my every word, and for the first time in a long time I feel unalloyed satisfaction at his presence, so stalwart and so certain. I was like that once, recently, within memory. I feel a flicker of the woman I was rising in me, and it makes me strong.

But Jordan is preparing to fight back, too. "Heathens and criminals. They were our friends once. Have you forgotten?"

"Our friends?" My voice is loud in the small room, sharp against the marble. I see Westwind's eyes slide to me, brows raised in surprise at my outburst; for a moment, I think I see the flicker of a smile. "How many of them fought for Lordaeron and died for Lordaeron? And how many turned their tails and ran at the first sight of trouble? You know as well as I do that not one of them was willing to stand by our land, though Light knows they lived off her wealth and Terenas's sainted generosity all their lives!"

"You're wrong. There were some who fought. From Gilneas, Crowley's men came—Ashbringer was forged in Ironforge, and even some of the priests from Quel'Thalas were our allies—"

Jordan is tries to say more, but I raise my voice so that I am talking over him.

"And such a great boon they were, to their people and ours!" I raise my glass of brandy in a mocking toast, and beside me, Westwind actually laughs. But Jordan only looks at me, open-mouthed with horror.

"Didn't they suffer enough for it in the end? They paid again and again, Light knows, all of them—"

I cannot help myself. I turn and spit on the floor. "Genn Greymane and those _subhuman pagans _all reaped what they sowed, and may they reap it again and again for a thousand years hence! I hope they die of bitterness, all of them!"

"I'm not defending them!" His voice is rising is match my own. "They don't share our values, we've always known that. But we loved them as individuals, you know we did. How could you forget that? Don't you remember Hilda Stonemantle? She was like a mother to you!"

A sound like a hiss escapes my teeth before I can stop it. Of course I remember. Does he not know what it has cost me, my fate? Everything: my home, my father, my friends, happiness, innocence. Sally. Doubtless my life, some day.

"What happened to you, Brigitte?" I can see, out of the corner of my eyes, that the skin of his fingers are turning white around the nail where he grips the desk so tightly. "Is this what your father died for? For you to drag us to this desolate hell and kill us off one by one, because you're afraid of—"

"Enough!" Westwind's huge voice makes my ears ring. "Brother Jordan, you overstep yourself."

Jordan is completely silent—that's a first. I turn, slowly, to look at the Admiral, and I see why. His cheeks are flushed, his mouth pinched with disgust, and those sea salt-coloured eyes burn. We are both held suspended, his helpless thralls, pinned and terrified.

And then he shakes his head and looks out the window.

Ruffled, I too look away. I do not need anyone to defend me. "Brother Jordan."

He does not stand, does not move, does not do anything but stare at me, pleading.

"You have your orders. You will work with LeCraft and place agents of unquestioned—_unquestioned_—loyalty in all major barracks. You will assist Bishop Street and I in selecting men for our inquiries." I look at him, this shrunken man, once one of my prime lieutenants. How old you have grown, my poor Jordan—old and ice-weathered, just like the rest of us. But I cannot show any pity—pity is so often mistaken for weakness. Sometimes I cannot tell the difference myself anymore. "Am I understood?"

He clears his throat once, then again. "Yes, High General."

I am taken aback by his agreement, but it is nothing to what I feel when he rises, his hands at his belt. The clasp jingles as he undoes it, his tabard falling loose across his wasted stomach. I watch, incredulous, as he draws it over his head, the red and yellowed-white sliding over his plate, catching at the seams. I see the tears and the stains and the years of hard wear. When he hands it to me I can smell the sweat on it, good honest sweat, the sweat of work and the Light's labour.

The inextinguishable flame of the Crusade has been sewn in rough scarlet thread, so unlike the embroidery on my own tabard, and it shows dull as rust. I look at it, bunched into wrinkles in my fist, and then at him.

"Jordan," I say. I do not let my voice waver, or show any of my feeling on my face: anguish and grief and regret and, more than all of that together, outrage, outrage that he of all people should be so weak, so disloyal. "Are you certain?"

"Are you, High General?"

I swallow. Where is that old temper, my faithful shadow friend? I could always count on her to show up and get me out of my self-pity. But she's nowhere to be found. "I've always been certain."

He doesn't mock me for this—he knows it is true. He only bows once, then turns away to leave.

For a long, terrible moment I watch his back, a broad farmer's back, retreating down the hall, and I hear the squeak of his salt-and-water choked boots on the wood, and the world spins around me, dizzying. I know, in this moment, that I am losing control, that everything is unravelling faster than I can work the loom. I fear I will not catch my breath before the chaos catches up to me.

But I do. I have no choice.

My guards await my orders outside the office. When Westwind ushers them back in they find me seated at my desk, stern as marble. I look from one to the other. "Brother Jordan has had a crisis of faith. Arrest him and bring him here. You." I look at the other as the first hastens to obey. "Fetch LeCraft to me. One leaves the Light's service only in death. Jordan may have forgotten, but I haven't."

They leave without a word. Jordan has been their friend as much as mine, and they will not relish this act. I do not ask them to. All I ask is absolute obedience.

Westwind's hand comes to rest on my shoulder.

"It had to be done," he says.

"Yes," I say. I rub my temples. "Yes, it must be done. Vigilance is the Light's order. My men have known that for a long time." I look up at the now-empty doorway, sudden sadness tightening my throat. Still. Jordan was my friend as much as my underling. It is a great loss. "His faithlessness would have festered. I… we are in Northrend. We can't afford it to spread."

He understands. His eyes, as hard as my heart feels, tell me that.

"The Light will test us more than once." I rise from my desk, smoothing down my own tabard, ermine white and flawlessly laundered. "And our enemies will learn that the leadership of the Crusade doesn't break so easily."

* * *

><p>After I left Sally I found my father seated at his desk in the loft, as he always was. The floor was streaked with dust and sunlight that came through the arrow slits, and I nearly slipped as I crossed the space towards where he worked.<p>

"Filthy place," I said. "Do you not have maids, father mine?"

He dropped his pen, looking disgusted. "Brigitte. I trust you attended to matters, and that's why you're here, bothering me?"

"Yes." I leaned against the stones and tried to peer out through the gaps in the masonry. From such a constricted perspective the Plaguelands were reduced to a palette of pale blue and rust, flat slabs of colour that made up the unchanging landscape. "I think she's a coward."

"I think otherwise." I could not hear the scratch of his writing. That meant he was watching me. Did he suspect what I was going to ask?

"Well, whatever she was doing with Isillien made her sick." I turned back to him. His face was half-hidden by my sun-dazzled eyes, but even near-blind I could see how old he looked. I didn't feel the least bit sorry—not yet. That would come, but later, later. "Which was what, dear father?"

"Not now, Brig." The words came out as a growl. "I'm very busy."

"I can see that." I nodded at the stacks of papers on his desk. "We're warriors, not bureaucrats. Or are you so old and tired that you love to rest your weary bones, even if it means signing requisitions?"

He sat back in his chair and studied me and truly he did look tired, tired and sad. "One day," he said, "you are going to hold this title, and I hope that before that day comes, you will understand the importance of war's less glamorous aspects."

"Maybe it would help if I actually knew what your titles entailed. Don't you think?"

He glowered at me. "My work does not overlap with the Grand Inquisitor's. Don't overstep your territory."

"But some High General you'd be, if you had no idea what he did."

"Of course I know," he said. "It's in the title. Daughter mine."

"Well, of _course_ you know he's Grand Inquisitor," I said, "that's obvious, even I know that. I didn't think you were that stupid."

Light, I was such a little brat that I cringe to think of it now. I'll never have a child, no sons or no daughters—the chaste (mostly) bride of the Light as I am—but if I did and if she spoke to me like that, I'd slap her so hard they'd hear the blow in Orgrimmar.

But my father rarely lifted a hand against me. For all his brutality with others, he was more or less gentle where his only child was concerned. He studied me, and I saw him working his jaw, as if chewing something other than words.

"What you're trying isn't going to work," he said. "Don't think I'm not onto you."

I leaned across his desk, resting on my elbows and obscuring his files. "The men talk, you know. I heard them saying that he doesn't even interrogate sometimes, just tortures prisoners for fun."

"Don't believe stupid rumours, Brigitte."

I straightened and stared down at him, a child playing adults' games. Of course I didn't think this at the time—what I thought was, _I have you now_. "How do you know they're rumours? You don't, do you? You just assume. No. You hope for the best, because—because you don't want to actually bother with finding out."

Did I say my father seldom hit me? That was true. Mostly. He hit me then, though, and however weak the blow was, my cheek stung and I saw stars and my eyes watered.

He had risen from his desk and now towered over me, surprisingly composed. He never lashed out in fury. That was his strength; his punishments were cool and level-headed. In that way Sally was more his pupil, and I—I was more hot-headed Isillien's.

"You want to be treated as a full-fledged member of the Crusade?" he said. I thought he would say, 'Then act like one,' and turn away in disgust, and so I held my tongue. But he merely shook his head. "A butcher like Whitemane hasn't the stomach for his work. What makes you think you do?"

"My faith is strong," I said, and made myself add, "Is yours?"

He looked down at me, and the muscle in his cheek twitched, as if he were grappling with some violent emotion. "Stronger than you know."

We stayed there like that, silent for a long time, wary of each other. Wariness had become a way of life. I wish, now, that I could have trusted him more. I wish he could have trusted me.

"You remind me very much of your mother," he said. "But no one would ever doubt that you are my daughter." He gave a crooked smile. "And you're everything that comes with my blood, Brigitte, for good and for ill."

A gust of wind screeched through the slits in the masonry, lifted the tapestries on the walls and blew dirt into my eyes, making me squint. Unexpectedly his thumb brushed my stinging cheek and my eyelids closed. I felt peaceful, suddenly—aching, sore, and beneath that, though I could not know it, sad. Yes. I felt at peace in sadness.

It was the Light. The Light's voice, calling to me, making my veins sing, making my flesh its tool, bending and warping me to its will as water warps wood, as the wind warps trees. The pain. The ecstasy. I was consumed, and around me was the singing of the breeze, specks of dust on the sunlight, and my father's hand, cradling my wounded face. In all the cacophony of silence, a light in which I could not see, I was nothing, nothing, nothing, a tool, expendable. We all were.

He took me to the dungeons the next day, needless to say.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Hey, remember that time I put up chapter one, and I was all, "Expect this early next week!" and then it didn't show up until Sunday? Yeah. Those were the days.<p>

Seriously, sorry for dropping the ball there. I had an unexpected pile-up of work, and then an unexpected date with an overdue library book. There are no real excuses. Editing is no fun, and Marion Zimmer Bradley is a blast. Guess who won _that_ contest?

I am going to try to get this up in under two weeks next time, but I won't jinx myself by making promises.


	3. Chapter 3

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Thanks to **Dusty the Umbravita **and **Seripithus **for the reviews!

Warning(s): This chapter contains graphic depictions of torture. As in, I grossed myself out writing it.

Chapter: 3/6

* * *

><p><strong>III<strong>

"You're certain, then." This was the greeting my father gave me when I met him in the fortress's great room. The servants had kindled a fire in the central grate, but it did little to warm away the night's chill.

Though it was only four hours past midnight I had risen earlier, too nervous to sleep. The evening before the Grand Inquisitor had come to my bedchambers, his soft, unmistakable knock sounding at the door as I bent over my journal, staring and writing nothing.

"Your father thinks the time has come for you to learn how the Light's servants wield Its lash," he said. Isillien made no secret of his dislike for me, though it was a dislike that shaded into true respect and, later, even admiration. In another world we'd have married and learned new forms of torture.

"Yes, I do," I said. And then, to prove I wasn't scared: "My father has finally seen reason."

He ignored this. "I would skip the plate, were I you," he said. "The dungeons tend to be… wet."

I blinked at that, but he'd turned away. "Be ready at two hours before dawn," he said over his shoulder. "An Inquisitor works unusual hours, Sister Brigitte. We don't have the luxury of sleeping in as you do."

Without knowing what to do I dressed the way I did on holidays: in a plain linen gown. Now I felt cold, and foolish, and overdone. But wearing my armour would have been an even worse pretension, particularly after Isillien's warning—I was not, after all, on duty. _Don't overstep your territory_. I was on Isillien's turf. Better to look like a civilian.

Isillien met with my father and I at the head of the stairs that led into the holding cells, slightly more human in his scarlet headdress.

"Nothing too gruesome," Father said quietly.

Isillien levelled a stony glare at him. "I had not known you were so squeamish, friend."

I squirmed under the helpless look father gave me. No, not squeamish, not High General Abbendis. I can only imagine how you vilify him. But he loved me. Surely you'll believe that of him, if you'll believe nothing else.

"The man we will be interrogating today is a defector." The steps shone slippery, but Isillien did not glance at his feet as we descended; I had to cling to the handrail for balance. "His company met with an abomination in the woods and was utterly destroyed, but when we burned the bodies his was not among them. He tried to flee to the heretics in the east, but—well, we intercepted him first, fortunately."

Father said, "Typical."

Over my head, he and Isillien locked gazes. "You know what that means."

Even I knew what it meant—leaking secrets to our enemies. Our position in Hearthglen was barely secure as it was, and to have loose-lipped soldiers, running off and spilling our locations, our numbers, our plans… Of course we had to know what he'd said.

"He continues to claim that he kept his silence, but his stories conflict," Isillien said when we reached the bottom. The darkness was like a long gasp down here, uninterrupted save for the flickering of torches against the wall, stone smeared black with soot, but there was no warmth to the light.

"How long was he missing?" Father asked.

"Five weeks, give or take a few days. When he showed up, he had no weapons." We were moving down a low-ceilinged hall, and the air, as Isillien had warned, was wet and cool. In a few places the mortar had worn away and the tainted Plaguelands soil poured through the cracks, caking the walls like dried bloodstains.

Down another flight of stairs, across another hallway, then down another. Were there endless levels below the keep, an entire self-contained hell I'd never dreamed of, miles beneath the places where I lived and worked and dreamed so unselfconsciously? My throat hurt despite the damp.

"In here," Isillien said, motioning us through a doorway so low I had to stoop to pass through. The enormity of where we were dawned on me only when the steel door slammed shut behind us and we were submerged in darkness, and all the sound around us was the drip of water from somewhere below. I listened, marvelling at the way all the colours had faded to a world of grey-on-grey, to the simplicity of that moment—water, blackness, and, waiting, a man who we would hurt.

We were not alone; Isillien had brought one of his creatures, a nondescript boy I knew I'd never remember.

_Can you keep your breakfast down better than Whitemane_? But I said nothing. My own stomach seemed to clench and unclench with every step we took, and despite the fact that I'd not eaten since last night, the thought of even an apple made me taste bile.

"It's probably best if we observe from here, friend," Father said after a space.

"Are you certain?" Isillien's voice was soft, even in the small room. "Perhaps seeing your expressions would make him feel debased. It would be a reminder of how subhuman he's become." He turned his eyes on me, eyes that perhaps I once would have called beautiful. "And a bit of pity seasons the dish, as they say."

"Don't be absurd," Father said. "My daughter and I do not pity traitors."

I could not find my voice.

"Come," Isillien said to the acolyte. "We must get started."

I watched them slip past us, quiet as shadows save for when the steel hinges of a second door grated.

I stood there in the darkness, shivering. Behind me, Father's footsteps rang off the stone, and his hand came to rest on my shoulder. "There are slits in the walls," he said, his voice lowered to a whisper. "We can see into the cell through them."

I licked my lips, tasting mould and dirt and sweat. Yes—unmistakeable, acrid, suddenly fouling the air. "You've been here before?"

"My faith is strong," he said. But mercifully, he did not ask whether mine was, too. He knew.

I followed him to what must have been one of said viewing windows, though I could see nothing. My fingers brushed the stone, seeking out a gap. So this was blindness? I now knew what fate I feared.

"Here," Father said, taking my hand and dragging it across the wall so that my fingers brushed crags and ridges, then nothing. I wrenched out of his grip, clutching my hand to my chest and rubbing it. The warmth of his touch, the roughness of his skin, was unbearable.

"You don't have to watch, if you don't want to." He had misunderstood the gesture.

Of course I did, after that. "I asked to come here." My voice trembled as I spoke but I ignored it and plunged on. "I asked, and I meant it."

My eyes were adjusting; I could make out shapes, moving shadows. The cell we overlooked was larger than I'd expected, circular, with smooth, uniform walls. The floor rippled and gleamed with light from an unseen source. Water, and it stank of algae and filth even at this distance.

Below, I heard the splash of footsteps, the turn of a crank, and then there was moonlight pouring into the cell from a slit high in the wall, above my father and I. I shut my stinging eyes.

When I opened them I could see more. Isillien and his assistant stood on a patch of dry floor that ringed the room, the boy's hand resting on a crank. And then, in the centre of the cell, I looked and saw a man's head, the water slapping against his neck.

"A submerging dungeon. The builders have been busy." My father spoke again from a distance, and I thought that I heard some awe in his voice. It was then that I realised that no, he had not been buried—what I had thought was a puddle was actually a huge pool, deep enough to reach his head when he stood. He was red-eyed and snarl-haired, his face crusted with mucus. A long-term prisoner, or just a short-term object of Isillien's attentions.

"Jones," Isillien said. "We are here to continue the questioning where we left off last time."

So the traitor had a name. My chest constricted, and Jones stared up at him, glassy-eyed, vacant—not, amazingly, squinting, even in the sudden brightness. Could he even see any longer? I suspect not—I found out much later that Isillien often blinded his prisoners with needles when he didn't expect to release them alive.

"If you cooperate, we might lower the water level a little. Do you understand?"

Jones didn't respond, just drooled into the murk, blinking.

Isillien gave his head a toss like a defiant animal. "Speak when you're spoken to."

Jones' cough rattled, and when he spoke his voice was gruff. "As you command. _Father_."

The questioning began immediately, at a pace I could barely keep up with, but Isillien seemed bored and over-rehearsed. Where had the company been attacked? Why did he not return to Hearthglen, when it was so nearby? Did he get lost? What landmarks did he see? Which path had he taken? The canyon he'd followed led west. Then why had he not tried to ford the Southern Elrendar river?

Isillien's cunning was a battle of its own—he had made it an art form, ferreting out secrets, prying apart lies to get to the human meat. On another prisoner, or even on Jones at an earlier date, probably he'd have had more success. But after twenty minutes of questions Jones was still blinking at Isillien blearily, giving gruff one-word answers, though whether through delirium or defiance I could not tell. The boy shook his head at us and they left, leaving the small hole open and the prisoner in his pool of sewer water and moonlight.

They joined us, briefly, and my father and Isillien conferred on what to do while I stared into the cell, transfixed. At one point I felt Isillien's gaze boring into me, but I did not turn to face him. Searching for weaknesses, no doubt, for a sign of regret or disgust. _I am stronger than you, _I thought. _I am not afraid, I know who the true monsters are. Do your worst._

He didn't, of course, not in front of me—Isillien loved my father too well for that. But he did enough.

When they returned to the cell he had rearranged his expression: his face was studiously blank as ever, but his lip twitched as if he were repressing a sneer of disgust, and his entire body had gone rigid.

"You will tell us everything you told your captors," he said. His voice had changed too. "You will furthermore tell us where they're located, the positions of their troops, the length of your incarceration, and any other details I deem pertinent. Do you understand?"

Jones was moving his sightless gaze across the wall behind them, his lips parted. I noticed that the corners had cracked and were bleeding, smeared red on his damp skin.

"The chains, if you please," Isillien said.

The boy's hand rested on another apparatus, different from the first—a single, solid lever, brighter than anything else around us. He gave Isillien a curt nod and suddenly yanked it down. Somewhere, below, a grate screamed; there was the groan of metal, and Jones' legs twitched as he was pulled out of the water by his arms. Rivulets ran off his neck and torso and flank, soiled grey and yellow. I had never seen a naked man before like this, and as my cheeks flamed I thought of how stupid it was, that the Inquisitors' privations couldn't make me blush but this could. I saw the water sores, open and oozing pus, the way his limbs sagged against his bindings, the muscles completely wasted. He must have been submerged for weeks.

Jones dangled, gawking. Only the trembling of the skin on his hand, a twitch in his thigh, gave away that he was trying to move.

"Where were you held?"

"Nowhere." Jones swallowed. "I was in the woods."

"Who captured you?"

"No one. I tell you this."

"Do not lie!" Isillien glanced at his assistant and the boy tugged another lever, straining a little to push this one. There was more grating, the tinkle of chain; Jones was lifted further, his feet pulled completely out of the water. I saw now that he was secured at neck, hands and ankles, that his wrists were bleeding where the manacles bit into his flesh.

"I'm not lying!" His eyes were moving back and forth as if he were trying to force a flicker of sight back to them. "Please, believe me, I'm not."

The boy gave another touch to the lever, barely a brush with his fingers, but that was enough. More clanking, more grating, and the bonds at Jone's arms were pulled tight, but this time as they lifted there was another reverberating clang, that of the lower shackles straining against the tension. Jones' face twisted and flushed; the ruined muscles in his legs stood out, and blood beaded at the tops of his feet where the steel cut into his skin.

"Tell us what really happened." Isillien looked at him curiously, a specimen in his collection of horrors. That gaze. Those eyes. The true nightmare. "And no tall-tales. For your own sake."

"I'm not lying, I'm not, there was no one, I swear. Only us in the woods, us and the Scourge, and when the abomination came we all fought and everyone died."

"Everyone save you," he said. "Did you desert?"

"No, I fought to the end—" The boy's fingers twitched against the lever once, even from my position I could see it, and Jones was stumbling over his words as if trying to catch a kite in the wind. "Yes, I ran away. When it showed up, I ran. Please, I'm sorry, I was so scared, it killed everyone."

Isillien's look of gratitude and the boy's answering smile made me want to vomit, and weep, and kill him. All of those things.

"I am not interested in your cowardly behaviour," he said. "Tell me what happened next."

"I wandered in the woods until I came here."

"No good." Isillien spat the words. "We can stay here a very long time. Longer than you, Jones."

"I'd have told you by now, if I were lying." His head rolled against the iron collar. "Anything, anything to stop this. I would have."

Isillien's mouth tightened. "Must we have another session with the good doctor?"

"No, no, please, why won't you believe me?" Jones looked at him in despair, and perhaps the boy found that blank gaze as crushing as I did, because he pressed the lever further, with a heavier hand. For the first time since we had come in, Jones screamed, loud, wordless, incoherent. For the first time, I looked away, though it didn't improve matters and I felt my shame on me, a hot wet weight. I can hear the crack of tendons like a whip snapping even now.

The sound of the chain ground to nothing, but Jones kept pleading, the sound dying away to a high, animal cry, a keen and a sob. "No… no, there was nothing, believe me, please…"

"This isn't working." The boy's tuneless voice had a note of frustration in it. "We'll have to try something else. The racks?"

"Hmm. No." Isillien studied the suspended man, worrying his lip between his teeth. "Fetch the pincers."

The boy inclined his head and left.

Jones twisted again, spinning, feeble and helpless in mid-air. "No, brother, I beg you, please, I'm telling the truth, I swear it before the Light."

"_Don't_." The word dropped like a stone. "Don't blaspheme here, traitor. Don't make your crime worse."

"What crime?" The chains creaked and cried as he shifted his weight. "I swear it, on the ashes of good King Terenas, I did nothing!"

Beside me, my father stiffened.

When the boy returned he was carrying the pincers, bright as silver against the squalor of the room and his crimson gloves. They were as striking as Sally Whitemane in their way and more than crueller, and I thought of her in the outhouse, wiping away her spit with a dainty gloved hand. Did I suspect, then, what a terrible pair they were, beautiful Sally and hideous Isillien? The wardens of hell, the fair and the awful. Dathrohan was a genius to see it.

"Lower the upper shackles, boy," Isillien said, taking them from him without so much as a glance. "I would have access to his hands."

The boy touched the lever again and Jones' hands jerked downwards, his useless limbs not strong enough for him to stay upright; he tilted, head over feet, until the chains caught him and tightened. The position was oddly exalted, beautiful, as if he'd been captured in some dive from the heavens.

Isillien pried apart the pincers' teeth and, carefully, like the prestigious Lordaeron healer he once was, brought them to Jones' hand. I could not make out what he was doing, but I had read enough books to suspect—he was holding onto Jones' nail, the smallest nail on his smallest finger. "These are the rough-gripped ones, yes?"

"Of course. As you ordered."

Jones was shaking his head, speaking too quietly for me to hear, muttering something—more useless apologies, pleas that would not be answered.

"One chance," Isillien said. And it is a testament to my innocence that, in that moment, I believed that if Jones said what he wanted to hear, Isillien would release him, and me. I prayed that he would—and when at first he didn't, I loathed him. "One chance to speak and stop this. _Brother_ Jones."

"You don't have to watch," my father said again.

_Yes, I do._

"What did you tell them, soldier?" I could not look at him, mesmerised by the pincer's movements like a charmed snake. _Will he do it now? Will he do it quickly? _"How much do they know? For the love of the Light, man, if you can't think of yourself, think of the people you called your brothers and sisters!"

Jones whispered, "No." But whether he was denying the accusation or begging him to reconsider I couldn't say.

Isillien started to pull.

The chains shook where Jones tried to pull away from his grip, but I understood the purpose of the water dungeon now—his skin was soft, puffy, corrupt, offering little resistance. The fabric in Isillien's shoulders pulled tight as he wrenched his hand back, once, hard.

Jones had screamed before, I said, but it was nothing to this. It split the air, it cut through me, and I wondered how I had never heard such cries before when I had lived here for so long. Even after he stopped the air rang with the noise. There were spots in front of my eyes, I was clinging to the lip of the window till the mortar ate into my skin, I wondered whether I too would pass out from pain, from sympathetic pain.

("It's an art and a science," Sally told me much, much later. "We all have our signatures, our flourishes. Isillien was a boor. He used to go to his interrogations like a lumberjack bedding his wife. Vigour and no style.")

Isillien tossed the fingernail into the water, the surface clouding bloody for a moment as it floated.

"What did you tell them? Our positions? Our location? Did you give them numbers, dates? What?"

Jones moaned; there was spittle flecked on his lips, sour beige.

"Again, then?" Isillien shook his head and brought the pincers to the next finger. This time, when he began to pull, he was slower, almost graceful, and I imagined that I could hear the tear of nail parting from skin, the rip as the bed was pulled free. Did I retch? Did I gasp, stagger on my feet? I don't know; my father did not look at me or reach out to me, and I felt detached from myself, floating above, impartial as the angels are.

"Yes." I couldn't tell whether Jones was crying or gasping for air. Perhaps both. "Yes, I told them, please, don't do it again, I beg you, please."

There was a beat, and I saw the boy looking at Isillien. His back was to me, now.

"It seems we have a grand traitor on our hands." I was glad, from my father's voice, that I could not see his face. "He will be dealt with."

My father was a good man. Part of goodness is justice.

"Please," Jones sobbed. "Please, believe me. I didn't know—I didn't—"

Isillien's shoulders were rigid as though he had braced himself against a strong wind, feet spread, spine upright and straight. A man who would never yield. A man who understood what righteousness was and what it required.

(But I confess I did not think this at the time.)

"By the holiness of the Light," he said, "you will be cleansed." And then, in a tone I'd never heard him employ before, he snarled, "_Monster_."

I can remember very little of what happened after that; I think I suffered with Jones that day, suffered every blow until I longed for death as he surely did. Isillien ripped out the rest of his fingernails, and then, with a squeamishness as out of place as flowers in the Plaguelands, refused to touch Jones' infected feet. The boy tilted him further forward so that he was nearly upside down and they simply dunked his head in and out of the filthy water.

_I have never known you_, I thought. _I saw you and never knew who you were until this moment. _

My heart was so soft it amazes me now. They did what they had to and I realise that, but at the time—at the time I hated Isillien with such force I thought it would sear my soul and devour me like felfire.

The interrogation continued, but it had a disjointed quality. Is that because of my memories, or because Isillien was so frenzied with rage he could barely speak? His questions were incoherent, and Jones' answers were silences, or screams, and when he spoke he babbled freely, saying whatever Isillien wanted him to say, contradicting himself again and again. I suspect most of the things he said were lies, fabrications. I suspect that, if Isillien noticed, he didn't care. He had gotten the confession he wanted. The rest was punishment.

When Jones passed out the first time I thought the ordeal was over, but the boy splashed cold water on his face and slapped him until he coughed up fluid and choked awake. Then it started anew.

I have since learned, from Sally and from personal experience, that one of the most effective torture techniques is to harm one prisoner in front of another. I certainly suspected that day. I was in turmoil, agony, my entire body an echo of those blows, wincing and unable to look away. Did they put on a show for me? Was it worse for my presence? I doubt it. And yet whenever I think of that morning, with the lace of algae at the pond's edge, the rust of the chain, the blood and human filth, Jones' tears, I feel such guilt that I cannot breath.

I have never told another this; I cannot explain it. Jones was a traitor. He got what he deserved.

I tell myself this: it is to be expected that my first time was the hardest. I was a child. I did not understand. It is to be expected.

* * *

><p>The ghosts live thickly in Northrend, clinging to the earth like a sheet of frost. At first I thought I was going mad, seeing shapes and shadows where there were none. Light dances off the sea ice and into the sky, and the sky reflects it back. The first night we arrived there was nearly a panic; a guard, seeing colours above the horizon, cried out, and before you knew it the soldiers were hauling on their pants, reaching for weapons, running out of the barracks and yelling curses and tripping in each other. It would have been comical if we'd not been at the Lich King's doorstep.<p>

I rose from my bed, offering a few choice swears of my own as I threw on my tabard. I'd fallen asleep in my armour, you see.

Outside was pandemonium—half the men had never seen the Midnight Banner flying before and thought it a tool of the valkyr; half of the men knew what it was and thought that we were under attack from elsewhere. I was in the latter group. I had the searchlights lit and sent out watches to the gates by the dozen while I waited with my own company, mounted, our horses snorting and steaming in the icy air. Overhead the Banner swung and twisted, bright as morning but acid green—plague green—horrifyingly beautiful. The guards found nothing, of course. I looked like a fool by the end of it.

It took a good two hours to sort out what had happened, and by that time the colours had faded and the sun was coming up. The men were exhausted and annoyed and dispirited, and I was in such a rage that I might have challenged Kel'thuzad himself to single combat if he'd shown up.

My second came to me in the blue of morning, his boots squeaking against the trampled and filthy snow. "A false alarm, High General." He did not meet my eyes.

"I gathered that, Lath." He tensed at my tone, but his gaze remained downcast. "What a fucking farce. Who was responsible?"

He hesitated for a moment, long enough for my eyes to narrow. "Sergeant Amfin. Madam."

"And what's Amfin's excuse?"

"He didn't know what the lights in the sky were." He snuck a look at me, then decided that discretion was the better part of valour and looked down again. "Most of the men weren't expecting to see it, and they thought that it was Scourge magic—"

"He practically soiled himself over a bit of colour in the sky." At my elbow, one of my elite guard laughed. "And if it had been a frostwyrm, Lath, what do you think would have happened?"

He stayed silent.

"We would be marching to Icecrown at this moment." I let the words hang in the air, hard and cold as ice crystals. "And not of our own accord."

"It is so, High General," Lath said.

"Have him whipped," I said. "_Publicly _whipped. I want them to know the price of folly in this land."

He bowed, but not before I caught the way his mouth twisted; he thought my order cruel. "It will be done, madam."

Weakness. There is a festering weakness in all of them. I turned away in disgust and regarded the ocean, immaculate against the squalor of horses and men and stables. Northrend is preferable to the Plaguelands, though.

Anything is.

* * *

><p>It was daylight by the time Isillien was done; the light had changed colours in the cell gradually, the walls turning from midnight blue to grey.<p>

"Alive?" my father asked when we met with him.

Isillien smiled. His hair was in disarray, his clothes clinging to him with sweat and grime, and he looked down at me, bloodless and trembling, and smiled. "Not for long."

I followed them upstairs, noticing nothing, my vision honed to an arrow's path, but I didn't throw up even once. My stomach was hollow. A peculiar buoyancy bobbed my steps. I wondered whether I would faint.

Isillien studied me in his peripheral vision with every step, his gaze fixed in the distance, no doubt wondering, Will she break down? Will she collapse? Or does she have the strength to serve?

I couldn't have shown anything even if I'd wanted to. My ears were ringing, my every movement seemed to take a superhuman effort. We emerged from the dungeons into the keep; the morning light scalded my skin after the coolness of the catacombs, and the fireplaces seemed as bright as the sun. The soldiers, my peers, greeted and jostled me, their laughter too loud, vulgar. I glanced at them in confusion.

"Are you alright?" My father was speaking softly. I noticed that he had his hand on my back, between my shoulder blades.

"I am fine." I turned to look at him. He was old, even then, and worrying over me made him older. Why did he concede to my request, in the end, knowing it would affect me as it did?

Ah. I have my answer. He knew it would affect me as it did.

"Justice was done this day," I heard myself say, automatic, Isillien's parrot. And it was then that Isillien looked at me, and I at him, and I saw it: respect. And somehow, that was more terrible than the rest.

I took my leave of them and walked outside. The earth cracked and ground to powder beneath my boots. In the distance, beyond the haze that marked the borders of Lordaeron, across Lordamere Lake, I was certain that the sky was blue, that nightingales nested and sang, that trees budded and flowered. I squinted but saw nothing.

In Lordaeron we said: _Even in death, I will not leave my homeland and my king. _It is an oath we make, unthinking, to be bound to the country of our fathers in the afterlife, one with its meadows and forests and fields, happy spirits tending our scions.

In Gilneas they said: _Nothing damns one like a promise. _

It was spring. My fate was sealed. I became a true Crusader.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Under two weeks this time, I said? What? What?<p>

Yeah, I'm sorry. November is a busy time. There are no excuses, etc. etc. I have also been dreading editing the torture sequence for a long time, in part because it's very hard to write that sort of thing properly, and in part because it needed (and received!) major changes. Major changes equals rewriting, and rewriting is nowhere near as fun as regular writing.

Thanks again for those of you have tuned in despite my major time-lapse.


	4. Chapter 4

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Thanks to **Dusty the Umbravita,** **Seripithus, **and **Demon-Something **for the reviews!

Warning(s): For references to F/F romance (like the rest of this fic, I guess), abuse, and mild horror.

Chapter: 4/6

* * *

><p><strong>IV<strong>

If you'd told me the morning I tended to sick Sally that in two years time she would be the fiercest of our lieutenants I'd have thought you a fool. You see that I lack the gift of foresight. I couldn't know.

But I thought of her often, nonetheless: Sally standing, bathed in flaming sunlight, staring up at the Crusade's arms; kneeling before a latrine, shoulders shaking, robes gathered around her thighs; descending the steps from the chapel, staring at her feet as Isillien leaned towards her and murmured in her ear, her hair like platinum and ice and moonlight.

I travelled far in those days, recruiting for the Crusade, a complement of guards all my strength against the Scourge. I went to the far west where the Greymane Wall stood. I went east, tearing through the dank Plaguelands vines with my machete, stumbling on pockets of living men who had to be purified with the Light before we dared approach. In the south I came within sight of the walls of Lordaeron, crumbling and vandalised. But it was enough; my men were well trained, and I was no helpless princess.

And at night, when I lay awake on my pallet and listened to the moan of the dying land beneath me I thought of her, her eyes like bloodstains, her brow furrowed in curiosity or judgment. And I wondered whether she, too, thought of me.

I had been in Hearthglen for scarce more than two nights this time when on the third morning of my return a messenger knocked at my door, oddly formal.

"Sister Abbendis." His bow would have been more fitting for my father's rank than mine. "Inquisitor Whitemane has arrived. She wishes to meet with you in the library."

I stiffened. Inquisitor Whitemane—I had not spoken to her since Jones was tortured in the dungeons, six months earlier, though she had doubtless been informed by Isillien. I had gathered as much from her reaction to me the few times she'd returned to Hearthglen. We had only ever seen each other at a distance, locking eyes with an intensity that promised either hatred or something else, something I could not name.

I wondered whether all my daydreaming had not been the thing to conjure her up. "Surely it would be more appropriate for her to speak with my father."

He bowed again. "Respectfully, Sister, she already has. She asked specifically for you."

My hands twitched at the hems of my sleeves, pulling them over my wrists as I always did when I was nervous. "Did she say what she wanted?"

"No." A third bow, and I scowled at him. "If my lady would be so kind, she is waiting for you as we speak…"

I looked at my nails-square, and bitten short. "Tell her I'll be down shortly, once I've dressed."

The library stood at the far western end of the compound, a squat, low building that looked more like a storage shed than the Crusade's wealth in knowledge and lore. I entered through the warped double doors, annoyed with how I had to slam them shut for them to remain closed fully.

Sally was waiting for me beside the grate, queenly in white fur draped over her barely-decent outfit. My father called it a costume, but he said it with a laugh and a shake of his head, as if implying, _What can you do? Genius and eccentricity go hand-in-hand._

She was so beautiful. Like the snows of the north. Like the first winter snows of Lordaeron, which was my home. Of course I was not the only who loved her. I had a rival.

Renault Mograine, standing at her side, glowering at me.

Laughable as he was, I hated him all the more for being so contemptible. He strutted around Whitemane, trying to act the dainty gentleman. _You've blood on your hands_, I thought, watching him. _Own it, and she will love you the more when you do_.

But I did not say this, and he did not do so.

I strode up to the pair, consciously mimicking my father's strut, keeping my eyes fixed, not on Sally, but on Renault. Did I believe Fairbanks's story about Mograine the Elder, how Renault had driven a blade through his own father's chest? I don't know. Saidan Dathrohan vouched for him. But even the best man can tell a lie when it serves his own self-interest. Isn't this one of the main points of our interrogations? In honesty: I didn't care who he killed. I wanted him out of my way.

"Sister Abbendis," Sally said when she saw me. She sounded amused, though her face was solemn. "Thank you for coming."

I had planned to play the gracious soldier but Renault's presence put me off my game and made me defensive. Whatever she'd called me down for, it was not what I'd hoped. "Yes? What's so urgent it couldn't wait until after breakfast?"

The corner of Sally's mouth lifted, but Renault glowered at me, red-faced under his yellow beard. "You've got a lot of nerve, Abbendis. Who do you think you are? I don't care what your name is. We both outrank you—"

"Let's grant her that point, lord," Sally said, giving him a pat that did nothing but fluster him and antagonise me. "Sister Abbendis is correct. We haven't eaten." Her white eyelashes fluttered like moth wings, and Renault straightened the already-straight belt at his waist. When she turned back to me, all traces of playfulness were gone. "Come, Sister. This is not a laughing matter we have to discuss, you and I."

You and I. _That means you should go away, _I thought to Renault, but I managed not to grin as he squared his shoulders, hiding his disappointment beneath a bow even I found impressive.

"What was Mograine doing here?" I said when he'd left. We made our way down an aisle of bookshelves. "You should have warned me."

Sally lifted a hand to brush a row of books' spines. "Why? We all serve the same cause, do we not?" The light filtered through the slats in the shelves and across her face, and her eyes seemed to deepen, as if I were looking miles down into bloody waters.

"Yes, but we're only mortal, and we don't get along."

She smiled and dropped her hand, reaching out for me. I tensed, expecting… I don't know what. But she simply tugged my disarrayed sleeve back into place and kept walking. "You have an ability for understatement. As your father does."

"My father is a great man."

"I don't contest this; it's fact. If you are half as strong in your faith, we're better for having you."

I felt that I should thank her, and yet the compliment was so condescending I could not.

"That brings me to my point. It would be appropriate for you to travel to the Monastery with Renault and I," she said. "Your abilities for recruitment are known. I think your presence there would be beneficial."

_For who? For you, for Renault? Would it further your position in the Crusade? _Certainly it would not be beneficial to me, or to the cause of the Light. I made a face at her back. This was some sort of political manoeuvre, and though I couldn't tell what, my instincts told me to run in the opposite direction.

"I don't think so. I think I'm better off here."

She paused, engrossed in a well-worn text so old the Common was non-standard—from the days of Arathor, when men were as wild as trolls. "Oh? Why do you say so?"

"There are more human enclaves left here. Hearthglen is well-fortified, but the Plaguelands are in worse shape than Lordaeron."

"They are not." Her sharpness surprised me. "You don't know what Lordaeron is like."

"I've travelled there."

"You have passed through its side roads on your way to other places." Seeing me open my mouth in protest, she raised her hand, silencing me. "You hear a criticism where there is none. But there are too many major operatives here. Too few there." A tremor stirred her. "The undead in the King's city—"

"I saw them," I said. "Don't forget, I was in the scouting group."

"Like flies on a great beast's carcass." She leaned forwards, so that her hair hid her face. Covering emotions, or studying another book? "A desecration."

"When do you return?" I said, rudely, because I did not want her to debase herself in front of me like this.

She lifted her head, her hair falling away from her face. "Soon, Sister Abbendis. And those who are willing to serve will come with us."

That stung—willing to serve. Had I not been party to Isillien's debauches? My blood still ran cold at the memory. Time heals nothing, sometimes. But the best I could muster was, "Good riddance."

Her expression did not even flicker; she kept staring at me like an animal teased beyond forbearance. I had no idea why she wanted me to travel with her, and why she should be so irritated at my unwillingness to do so. It made me stubborn and, I confess it, a little sulky.

"Is it Commander Mograine?" she asked. "Why do you despise him so?" Her eyes widened. "You don't believe those absurd lies of Fairbanks, surely."

"Fairbanks was a fool and a madman." I crossed my arms across my chest. "Like Renault could manage to kill his father. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's more likely that the late Highlord tripped and fell on his sword than that that boy got a blow in."

For once my insubordinate attitude did not amuse her. Sally's expression darkened. "You overstep yourself, Brigitte Abbendis. Commander Mograine is a military leader to be admired."

"_Admired_?" My cry was loud to my own ears; her defense of him struck something deep in me. "He's incompetent! Sure, he can use a sword, I suppose, but every week we get more reports of your disasters in Tirisfal. How many men has he lost out there? No wonder you can't keep up recruitment, everyone you get dies like cattle in a slaughter!"

"Sister Abbendis, enough." She closed the space between us, looming over me, but I was not afraid. She was a priestess, I a warrior. I would take my chances with the odds. "The Crusade must have perfect unity. No more. Knit together. Swallow your pride. What will the underlings say, if they hear you mocking Renault?"

"They'll say, 'Well, someone over there has some sense, at least. Maybe this lot's not a bunch of old fools after all.'"

You can imagine my surprise when she slapped me.

I had only ever been struck by my father before, and no other Crusader would ever have dared such a thing—not Isillien, not even Saidan Dathrohan. The impact stunned me into silence. One of her rings sliced open my cheek; I felt the wound smarting and closed my eyes, then opened them, stared at her staring at my cut face, looking fascinated and horrified. I thought of myself, young and angry and chastened in my holy red. I thought of myself, lying awake at night, thinking of her. _Do you think of me, too?_

She had hit me. I was a fool.

The words came to me, crystallising like patterns of ice. _She hit me. I'm a fool._

Then: _I am no one's fool!_

Very calmly, as if I were advising someone else on what to do in a highly improbable situation, I raised my hand and slapped her, hard. The sound was loud, like the crack of breaking bones, and beneath my exultation I worried that I'd crushed her cheekbone. I probably could have-it was so fragile, like the wing of a bird, and I felt it come up against my hand, rolling beneath the skin.

She turned her head back to stare, wide-eyed. Already her skin was red and angry; soon it would doubtless be bruised and angry. We faced off, gaping, breathing hard as if we'd been grappling for hours. Her lips parted; I saw the dart of her tongue, suddenly scarlet against her teeth. They were smeared bloody.

And then she surprised me: she laughed, a long, bright, genuine laugh, the sort of laugh heard maybe once every moon turn in Lordaeron in those days. Infectious in its amazed joy. And I realised how absurd we were, scratching at each other like lasses in an erotic novel, and I laughed, too, just as openly and as freely. Laughed until tears ran down my face and into the gash, making it throb and turning my blood to stinging acid. But I couldn't stop until much later, when she did.

"Maybe we should put you with the crack forces," I said when we'd sobered, poking at the cut. It was not deep, but it was long and my father would ask after it. I did not relish the idea of that conversation. "I had no idea you could throw a punch like that."

"Hush." She stroked my cheek, and my face burned with a wash of warmth: healing Light. "I apologise, Brigitte. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Only scold me, right?"

"Right." She gave me a final pat and nodded, looking pleased. "You heal well. Your skin is very smooth. I worried you would scar."

"I wouldn't mind a scar." And when she gave me a surprised look, I added, "I could make up a story about it. Something fascinating and implausible."

She smiled, so uncertain, almost girlish. "It's a sin to lie."

"Everyone lies," I said. "I bet you lie, too. And High Commander Dathrohan."

As soon as I said it I regretted it, because of course she would think that I was referring to his defense of Renault, and she would get angry again, defending him, and I couldn't bear to hear that. But she shook her head. "You utter such casual blasphemies, Sister. It grieves me."

"Don't say that," I said. "I don't mean to blaspheme. I take up a sword and hunt monsters for the Light. I think I'm permitted the occasional bit of brevity."

"Yes," she said. "You are young for a warrior. But your heart is steel." She peered up at me through narrow eyes, her blinks slow, sleepy, as if she were drifting off and struggling to keep herself awake. "Fire and steel, Brigitte."

Something in her look made my skin tingle, and I felt that I should step away, perhaps leave. But I did not; I moved towards her, almost on tiptoe. There was a scar on her face I had never noticed before-a clean notch under her eye, as if someone had carved it out with a sickle. Her hands were at my neck, and I could feel myself breathing, each breath like a lifetime, a world in every exhalation. The fine white hairs on her skin rose and trembled—she was so close I could see them. She was so close I could see the grey ring around her irises, like a hoop of scales, lizard-like, amphibious.

"Be tempered," she said, at the same time I said, "Yes," and then our lips touched, like a sigh that I thought more than felt, her tongue parting my lips, tasting of her blood, tasting me tasting her, and then I went under, drowning, delirious, clinging to her thinking nothing, or perhaps thinking only, _Tempered, yes, I am tempered._

My fingers found the angle of her jaw, her hands my waist, arms wrapping around me, pulling me to her so that we were chest to chest, stomach to stomach. Our teeth knocked and my nails bit into her skin, and she pressed against me so roughly I was certain I bruised her. Her voice was a shuddering gasp, her call, her answer to my unvoiced question, Is this blasphemy? Is this madness? Are we possessed, or is it the Light that shines in on us, and we caught up in nothing more than its wash of holy warmth?

"Inquisitor Whitemane, I was—oh, excuse me!"

We broke apart; just like that the moment was shattered. My blood seethed and screeched and sang, and I watched Sally, her shoulders trembling.

"Brother Harol," she said, but she had lost her flatness; she shook, and it scared me. "What are you doing here?"

His mouth opened and closed. I noticed that his complexion had turned waxy. "I was… forgive me, milady, Commander Mograine sent me…" He looked at me, helpless, and I might have pitied him had I not so acutely pitied myself. "He wishes to speak to you. My leave, lady."

Without waiting to be dismissed, he fled.

Sally turned to look at me, and I stared at her, desperate. But the moment had passed. She was already gone. I saw the ice close over her, saw the gleam of rime return to her eyes, part cunning, part anger. Though I could only know that later.

"Sister Abbendis," she said. Her tone was irreproachable, as was her bow. She swept past me, leaving me standing there, weak-kneed and trembling. Fear and desire and anger and betrayal. Love. All those things together, together in her and now, forever, in me.

I have never been able to unweave those threads, though the Light knows I have tried.

* * *

><p>"You know what I must do," Father said.<p>

His back was to me. I could see his salt-and-pepper hair, which was rapidly approaching just salt. The years had been bitter to him. They say that the Scourge had tortured him and Isillien in the sewers beneath the king's palace, flaying each before the other, sewing their eyes shut and pulling out their hair with pincers, splashing acid into their faces, then healing them.

My father never spoke of those times, and there are many among the Crusade who say they did not happen and who punish those who dare speak of it. They claim that to do so is to question my father's sanity. Nonsense, I say. The priests of old used to flagellate themselves with whips and rods; I hear that there are those among the Gilneans who still do. There is strength that comes from pain. There is knowledge.

"I understand," I said.

Harol had told him, of course, the miserable little rat. I had expected no different, but I had trembled nonetheless, and the afternoon had passed in a blur of agony as I wondered, When will he come? Does he know yet, or will Harol wait until after dinner?

He had not waited; I knew this because Father was not present at the meal. I ate with my head lowered, my face burning as if all the crusaders could see my secret shame written in my blazing cheeks. I did not once look at Sally save for halfway through dinner when, abruptly, she stood and left, the imprint of my hand plain on her face for those who could read it.

The next time I saw her, Father was dead.

"You don't want to tell me the whole story?"

He was needling me, trying to get me confess or lie. Maybe he wanted to be lied to. Certainly he did not want to believe what Harol had told him.

"No," I said. "There is nothing for me to say."

He turned away from the slats in the windows to glare down at me. "Actually, there's quite a bit to say! What were you _thinking_?"

Quietly, my voice shaking, I said, "I wasn't thinking, obviously."

"Obviously! Obviously!" He had worked himself into a temper now; he paced back and forth in front of me, hands flying as he spoke. "Are you mad? Ill? Did I raise you to act like this, a wanton whore in some cheap Stromgarde brothel? I don't even understand it. You never gave me trouble before, not even once—I expected you to take an interest in boys, I would have understood it, but Whitemane!" He rounded on me, wild-eyed. "She was responsible, wasn't she?"

I kept silent, my head lowered.

"Don't tell me then!" It came out as a snarl. "Light, your mother would know what to do! She would never have let this happen." Now the slightest hint of despair had crept into his voice, and I quavered to hear it. "I did my best. Was it my fault? Was it me? Did I raise her wrong, Light of the World?"

The Light of the World does not answer, so I spoke for it. "It wasn't your fault, Father. I'm sorry."

"Good!" he said savagely. "Good, be sorry." He turned on his heel and marched towards his desk, and I watched him, breath caught in my throat, as he tore through the drawers, yanking them open one by one until he found it. His quarry; my terror. A plain black leather riding crop.

"Hold out your hands."

I did. They shook.

"Do you think this makes me happy?" He brought the crop down across the backs of my fingers, searing a red-hot line. I cried out. With my father there was no point in pride. "Do you think this is what I want to do?"

I whimpered as it descended again. "No."

He had nothing to say to that. The lash rose and fell steadily—hard enough that the skin broke on the eighth strike and blood curved around the wound, welling and dripping to the floor. Soft enough that he would not truly wound me. He hit me seven more times after that, and I kept my head lowered, listening to his ragged breathing, feeling the fierce sting of every blow, the wet slap.

"Fifteen is sufficient." He pulled out his handkerchief, old and grey, and wiped the blood from my hands. Then, turning the cloth around, he used the clean side to wipe the tears from his face. "All crimes are punished, Brigitte," he said, but his voice was low and gentle. "Do you see how much it pains me to hit you?"

I wept then, with him, and my tears splashed his hands and sloughed the dirt away. I could not bear to displease my father, but I also could not lie to him. I would do as I wished. I always have.

* * *

><p>The Lich King has tools besides the brute engine of the Scourge. He has kept all the animal cunning of the orcs, the ruthlessness of a man. In my youth I might have called him a worthy opponent. I am too old and tired for that now. He picked off my advisors and doctors and generals, my highest-ranked and best-educated men, and he did it without ever once setting foot on our territory.<p>

Father Forer woke one night in darkness to the sound of a woman's voice, singing to him a song he knew from long ago. He followed his dead wife out to sea and was nearly drowned; we pulled him back in, sodden and shaking, and one look at his white face was all it took for me to forgive him his madness. I settled for a lacklustre lashing and an afternoon in the stocks after the doctor saw to him.

Doctor Llocker himself was not so lucky—we found him dead in his surgery, his throat opened with a scalpel he held in his hands, his eyes wide and staring. What drove him to it? Patterns on the ceiling, ghosts, a sorry life lived over? Impossible to say.

And the blacksmith: Hayton's bones were in the forge, but from the way his knuckles curved around the fire door, it seemed he had gone in of his own accord.

I have ghosts of my own.

Sometimes now I wake up at night, clutching the blankets to my chest, teeth chattering even as a fire roars in the grate. I feel like a child again, lost in the dark and longing for the warmth of my father and my mother. Particularly my mother. She died birthing me, and I can afford to be nostalgic about her, never having known who she was.

Sometimes she comes, though; I recognise that it is her in my bones and blood, a longing so deep it is beyond words. Sometimes it is my father, or Isillien, or Darion Mograine, or Maxwell Tyrosus, or Uther, or any of a hundred people I've loved and lost.

Mostly, though, it is her. She comes to me at night in the places between the shadows, where the Light does not touch and only memory lives. Sometimes I find her sitting at the foot of my bed, naked save for her long white hair, which she holds over her breasts, coyly, even though I have seen them before. She is sitting there now. I thought she was an illusion at first, sent to torment me, only I can feel her weight against my feet. Even through the blankets she is as heavy and cold as a corpse.

"Sally," I say. My lips are so numb I can barely say it. "Sally, what—"

She turns her mocking gaze on me. Her eyes are as red as ever, but she is not wearing that awful heavy makeup, and her face is bare and it looks strangely unformed. Young. It looks young. "High General Abbendis. What a surprise. I thought that was your father."

"The Light will scourge you, evil thing." I close my eyes but her fire burns through my eyelids, and I can see her perfectly. "You have no power on hallowed ground."

"Oh, no?" She laughs, and it sounds so much like her real one that I have to sneak another look at her. "Must we go through this every time, Brigitte?"

My sword. I can barely think for the cold, seeping through my skin as though I have been drenched in icy water, but I manage to form the thought: I need my sword.

"I'm so much older now," she says. She shifts her weight and her hair drapes over the bed and drags along my legs. I jerk my feet away. Even through metal the contact is like the splash of slush, or the seaweed that washes up frozen on the shore. "I know what I'm doing. Do you, High General Abbendis?"

My limbs seem locked against my body, my joints swollen with the chill. I try to move slowly, but moving is so difficult at the moment, and I am shaking, almost convulsing. I jerk my hand towards the night table, inching to where it must be. It must be there. Against the bed.

Sally's doppelganger makes no effort to stop me, just watches me with a faint smile on her face. I would hate it less if I did not recognise it. I loved that smile once. What Scourge creature is this, who looks so much like my Sally and feels so much like the dead?

"You are afraid." She leans forward so that she is crouching on her hands and knees, still naked. If she held me down I would be helpless against her. "But why? Am I not your friend, your dearest friend?"

I push myself towards the edge of the bed with a great shove, grunting with the effort. I should never have kept my armour on; that was idiotic. It's not swords that the armies of the Scourge put to work. It made me feel safe, and I am not safe.

"What are you doing?" she asks, and at last she touches me. I cry out in pain where her fingers close around my shoulder; I can feel the throb of glaciers, snowfields, pans of ice, the infinite chill of graves.

"Kiss me again," she said. Her face comes is very close to mine, so close I can feel her breath, like a biting wind. "I've missed the feel of your skin. This beautiful hair. Your arms around me."

If this is supposed to be temptation, then I am watertight against it. I feel no desire whatsoever, only a dull, vague horror, my heart pounding in my throat. I will break down, I know it, but later, later, when the moment has passed. Right now all I am thinking is: get my weapon. Get it in my hands.

I reach out, blindly, for my sword, and yes, it is where I left it, propped against my night table. My hand closes around the hilt and with all the strength in my body I roll onto my back, swinging the blade above my head and towards her. It is not enough. I am drained in the presence of this thing, and she moves to avoid its arc effortlessly. It strikes the bedding, my fingers limp around it.

It feels like an eternity that she is watching me, with her limp hair and her inhuman eyes. Her movements are wrong, jerky. I shudder and try to curl away from her, from her knowing stare, but she grabs my other shoulder and pins me down. The cold travels from her fingertips to mine; the sword falls from my hand, now numb and useless.

"Did it have to end like this, Brigitte?" she spits. "Light. Did anyone love you the way I did, in all the world?" Her face is very close to mine, now, and I can see that it is not Sally, that its skin is as tight as the skin of an apple. Tighter, even: pulling apart when it speaks, leaving narrow fissures. "You are going to die like an animal!" Its fingers twine in my hair and I shudder. "Just like me! Just like me."

"No." The word sounds loud in the silence of the chamber. Where is everyone? Where is the watch, why do they not come? Why does the firelight seem to touch neither the shadows nor me? "No. The Light guards its chosen."

"As it guarded Darion Mograine?" I say nothing, and the thing gives my head a rough shake, as I once shook Sally's. "As it guarded Darion Mograine?"

"Faithless." The word is barely a whisper, but I hear it.

It laughs, then, a banshee's laugh. It pierces my ears and it makes me shake, makes all the light and air leave the room. I bring my trembling hands to my face, trying to keep it out, but it wrenches them away. Its touch stings like a burn. I will have bruises and scars tomorrow, if I survive this. If I survive. My sword is there, but it is too heavy for me to lift, and apathy tugs at every fibre of my body. It would be so easy just to sleep, to forget that this is a monster image and curl up against it, against her. My Sally. Returned to me, impossibly, at last.

The dagger. I remember. I am armed, still.

"You could have come with me," it says, "that day when I asked you to travel to the monastery. It would have been better for all of us. You'd never have let me die the way I did. You could have defended me."

No. That's a lie. I couldn't have protected her. It would have made no difference. I would have left, and travelled to meet the High Commander. She would have died no matter what I did. No matter what.

"On the contrary," it says, "not no matter what. You could have asked me to stay with you in New Avalon. Ordered me to. I wanted to stay with you, Brigitte."

"Not authorised to… to give…"

"Orders," it finishes for me, and that's so typically Sally I fear I might give in, the weak part of me breaking free of its bindings like so much rotten balsam. "Correct. You weren't. All I wanted was a damn invitation."

I wanted her to stay too. More than anything. But I couldn't ask her to shame herself like that. We needed her elsewhere.

Excuses. I was too afraid of the judgement of men. The fact remains: if she had remained in New Avalon, then maybe, maybe she would be here, in Northrend, by my side. As more than a memory, more than just another angry ghost.

Its lips brush my ears as it leans in, and it whispers in Sally's voice, "You killed me through your negligence. Through your lack of love. Through your lack of faith. Just as you killed your father."

Horror gives me strength: horror that it should say this, this thing I have sometimes thought and always feared. I bend my hand up, my fingers brushing the hilt of the blade in my vambraces, and before even I know what I'm doing I bring the dagger up, driving it through the hollow between the thing's breasts. Its ribs yield before the steel, crumbling like wet plaster, and I press it into the monster's heart. Withered and dead, no doubt. But it gives me no pleasure.

It screams once, a scream that feels like it should shatter the mirrors and the glass, and then its form moults hair, eyelashes, skin, muscles, peeling away to webs of veins, nerves, bones, and then the bones are ground away too, dissolving to dust on a breeze I cannot feel.

I lay there for a long time, trembling. My dagger, when I lift it, is unbloodied, the same flawless grey as ever. But I was not imagining things. When I lean over the edge my bed, clinging to the corner of the mattress to keep from tumbling with my sudden light-headedness, dust like charcoal stains the wood.

It is too much to bear, all of it. Though it is the maid's job I stumble to the closet, looking for a broom. I tear through the boxes, knocking down a pile of blankets. In my terror I am making an enormous amount of noise, probably waking up every soldier in the place, but I can't bring myself to care.

Broom in hand, I return to the bedroom and sweep everything into the dustpan, scouring every inch. Then, thinking that the remains were so fine, like sand on the wind, I take out one of my old, grey undershirts and dust off the night table, the bookcases, the stands, even my coat rack and the feet of my bed.

I cannot bear to have anything of it left. Whatever it was. It was not Sally.

The fire is burning low in the grate, but it roars to life like a furnace when I toss the dust in, piles of it pouring into the blaze. Ashes to ashes. May she stay dead, this time.

My hands are shaking, oddly; the room feels smaller, constricted, as if I am staring at it through a tunnel. I try to turn back to my bed but my legs tremble and I stagger, toppling to the floor in a clatter. I barely register the impact, only notice myself staring up at the ceiling, wondering how I got here. Exhausted, completely spent, I can only slump against the chair, my back pressing into the wooden legs. My thoughts are a mantra: Sally, Sally. And then, _I killed my father, and then I killed you_.

The fire burns on for an hour, and I wonder what it is was it was made of, this monster Sally, that it should burn like so much tissue or so much silk. It is not until the fire has settled, the embers glowing, that I sit back, allowing myself to breath. Holding my breath has made me dizzy.

At length I stand, my legs boneless, almost like rubber; I have to lean on the arm of the chair for support. I could weep with pain and relief, but I am Brigitte Abbendis, High General Abbendis. That was my father, too, and his strength is in me. His strength and his terrible wisdom. I do not cry.

Instead I go outside.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Thanks again for tuning in! I hope this chapter was at least sort of worth the wait. Two months-I really couldn't believe it, but here we are. I've been extraordinarily busy lately, and probably will be until May, but I'm going to try <em>not<em> to take two months this round. Especially since I have other fics to tend to as well.


	5. Chapter 5

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Thanks to **Dusty the Umbravita **and** Demon-Something **for the reviews! *snuggles*

Warning(s): Depictions of F/F sex, and, on a less pleasant note, graphic torture, and self-harm.

Chapter: 5/6

* * *

><p><strong>V<strong>

Time passed. My father died. The world shifted, and not for the better.

Carving my way into the Scarlet Enclave was the hardest thing I have ever done, and perhaps the best. I was the one who founded New Avalon, who encouraged the smiths and farmers and milkmaids and woodcutters to leave the safety of their cities and risk their lives for an unknown venture in besieged lands. A woman commanding men: I think they had little faith in me, at first. But a little faith was all I needed. I proved myself to them, and they loved me, and I—I loved them, too.

We had been there for about eight months when Sally arrived. She had requested the right to commune with myself and the rest of the Crusade's leadership and I, feeling gracious, obliged her. I did not envy her the weeks spent travelling through the Plaguelands. Even with a full contingent of guards the trip was perilous—and the monastery could not spare a full contingent. Not with Renault gone, and my father dead too.

I was helping with the construction of the cathedral, carrying bricks to stack for the wall, when one of the squires ran up to me, red-faced and panting. I could still smile in those days. My heart pounded as it ached; my star was rising. The Enclave was absolutely beautiful, the first beautiful place I'd been in nearly four years. I thought that victory was a matter of when, not if.

"Be at peace!" I called, laughing down at him as he struggled for breath. He leaned against the scaffolds and the head mason cuffed him.

"High General," he said. "The High Inquisitor has arrived."

I arched my eyebrows at this and climbed down from the wall. My hand was bleeding, probably from the stones; I left a smear of blood across the boy's back when I patted him.

Sally was waiting for me by the stables, looking around at the chaos with a curl to her lip that I knew all too well. I laughed when I saw her, winding my way between wagons and horses and troughs, scattered anvils and bolts of cloth, heaps of hay.

"You're one face I never thought to see again," I said. "High Inquisitor Whitemane. You… honour me."

Her red eyes flashed. "Disappointed, High General?"

"Oh, not at all." I paused for emphasis. "And how is the monastery?"

I did not ask about Renault; I feared that she missed him, that she had loved him and only realised it after his death. They were very close, those two—was it the closeness of those who have shared in atrocities, or something more?

When she looked up at me her face was cold and expressionless, but her eyes were red, and they smouldered. "The cause continues in its forward march."

The venom in her voice could only make me smile. I gestured to the road that led back towards the settlement, to where my cabin stood. "Shall we?"

We made a strange pair, the two of us, her decked out in the absurd finery of the Crusade in Lordaeron, I in my tattered leathers, my sword unsheathed at my side, my arms cut and bleeding. The workers stopped what they were doing to stare at us, or perhaps just to stare at her. Sally could draw eyes in a way I couldn't, resplendent as a queen, imperious and cruel and half-mad. A queen on the brink of being deposed, if the rumours were true.

I determined to find out that instant. "I have heard troubling reports of the monastery. I want you to tell me what's going on."

She tensed. "I thought you of all people would understand—"

"I do." I stopped and turned to look at her. "I understand the necessity of keeping order. We do what we have to."

She said nothing. She knew there was a reproach coming; there always was.

"But methods that create more disorder defeat their own purpose."

"Fear is all that keeps a panicking populace in line," she said, automatically. I suspected she had made the same argument to herself. "If there were better ways I'd uncovered them and put them to work."

I glanced at her, letting my eyebrows rise in mock surprise. "Really, Sally?"

She stopped and turned sharply to stare at me. I looked at her, red-gold and silver. The brilliance of the sunlight would have been unflattering to a lesser woman, too stark and honest; it made her glow like a pearl, burnished, impossibly lovely, far richer than anything around us. "You are suspicious. You think the stories about me are true; you give them credence." Her voice dropped. "You believe that I take pleasure from the suffering of others."

"Frankly," I said, "yes."

She opened her mouth, but clamped it shut just as quickly.

"There are undead sympathisers within the ranks," she said, when it became clear I would not speak further. The words came out flat.

"I know." I inclined my head, gesturing that we should keep walking. "It's why we need you. To root them out. But subtly, Sally. Subtly."

"I am the picture of subtlety," she said, and the Lich King himself would have admired her coldness. For my part I sighed, unwilling to argue it further. We walked the path in silence, and it was only when we'd passed my house and were nearing the sea that she asked, with some apprehension, "Where are you taking me, High General?"

"To help do what you do best." I motioned at one of the low stone bunkers, carved into the hills up ahead. Beyond them, over the swell and crest of the earth, you could see the ocean, shining like obsidian, as smooth and as dark. "Rooting out undead sympathisers."

"_Here_?" She looked around and I knew that she, too, considered this place paradise. "Truly, in New Avalon?"

"Yes. Here."

I briefed her as we walked. If Sally was annoyed at being pressed into work so soon after arriving—not a drink, not a basin to wash her hands, not even a chair to sit in—she said nothing. We are the Crusade. We serve with all our strength.

The fortifications were rough-hewn, not fit for human habitation. We had been positioned here long enough that the soldiers had housing of their own: a shared wooden barracks for the rank and file recruits, private housing for officers. Rustic, but not uncomfortable, and preferable to what most crusaders would have elsewhere.

Sally was right to be surprised, in a way. We had small need for prisoners, but 'small' need was greater than none. Even amidst the beauty and plenty of our newly made haven there were those whose hearts were worm-eaten ruins. Scheming. We could keep them here, underground, under constant military surveillance, and I felt a little better for it. I had ordered the arrest of a few dozen since our arrival, most of which had either been deemed innocent following interrogation and released or confessed to their crimes and been put to death. A couple, however, had been less than cooperative, and even LeCraft's impressive skills had proved insufficient. I remembered Sally scorning Isillien: a brute, all rage, no artistry. But I longed for Isillien now that he was long dead. He'd have made them talk and talk, as he always did, until talking became a sort of prayer.

Enter Whitemane.

LeCraft was waiting for us, his hands folded across his stomach with typical stiffness, straight-backed, and he graced me with a courteous greeting-but I saw his eyes move to her, to her beauty, unrumpled even by such a journey.

Sally barely gave him a glance and looked around, taking in the bare rafters, the damp stone walls, the packed mud floor, the torches spluttering in the darkness. She wrinkled her nose. "This is what you give me, High General? A hovel in the ground, unfit for farmers?"

_We _are_ farmers, and miners, and warriors, _I thought, but only said, "It's a prison. It's supposed to be horrible."

"I cannot work in these surroundings." She gave a sniff. "And I see no sign of incarceration. Where is the prisoner?"

"Alone, in the dark," LeCraft said. His voice was breathy, almost a whisper.

I chose a chair against the wall and sat back on my haunches, bringing one of my knees to my chest and hugging it there. "The finicky artist. My father said you're a genius. Show me that he's right."

I had made my move correctly. She turned back. "Well put. Consider the gauntlet taken up, sister." She looked around, taking in the weapons, the ropes, the pail of water, and gave a brief nod, as if satisfied.

"Hm. Not ideal. But this will be sufficient."

* * *

><p>LeCraft led us down a brief flight of stairs into the basement, such as it was: a fortified cellar, more like. The ceiling here was low, so low that she had to walk nearly bent over, though I only had to crane my head. It was a surprise, to remember how much taller than me she was.<p>

LeCraft carried the torch, leading the way; Sally and a low-ranking grunt I'd ordered along followed, she making the occasional noise of disgust, he carrying the tools LeCraft had demanded: the ropes, the knife, the pail of water. A mystery puzzle we'd solve together later. The dungeons in Hearthglen had been cold, even in the full flare of summer heat. Here the packed earth and the confined space and the burning of torches and fevered bodies made it hot, until I burned in my leather. I wiped my forehead with one hand, holding the light aloft with the other.

"In there, High Inquisitor, High General," LeCraft said, gesturing to the steel door ahead. "Take the torch, please, and allow me."

In the shadows around Sally's face, I saw her lips thin to a line. "This prison is not secure. They do not dart for the entrance?"

"They're well chained." I offered her a smile. "With more than physical shackles, if you know what I mean."

She made a noise that said she did, and took the light while LeCraft fumbled with the lock. Still, I noticed the flare of holy light in her other hand, sharp as broken glass catching the sun. She would take no chances.

We emerged into darkness. The torchlight flushed the shadows from the room. Behind me, the soldier flinched at the sight. I imagined it through his eyes: wasted, filthy bodies, tethered to the walls; overflowing buckets of refuse, the stink of disease and unwashed skin. Used to it as I was, I nearly gagged, then caught myself.

"The hell beneath heaven," Sally murmured.

I glanced at her. "What?"

"Nothing of import." She snapped her fingers. "Where is the prisoner?"

LeCraft made a tasteless flourish towards him. He lay, slumped against the wall on a patch of hay, his face covered by a snarled beard. His eyes followed us dully, listlessly. He was almost completely broken. Almost.

There are men who cling to their dignity and their sanity even in the worst of conditions. I've found that you cannot know who is who until the moment is upon them: they have nothing in common. Sometimes the human spark is in farmers, intellectuals, princes, paladins; sometimes I've been surprised to find it in thieves, highwaymen, cheats, murderers, cultists. It was in my father; it was not in Isillien. I think it is how he survived torture by the Scourge to return to me, the man he has always been.

Sally was not thinking about dignity, I could tell; I pushed those thoughts away. Whatever his strength was, he deserved nothing less than the best of her skills.

"What have you tried, Brother?"

LeCraft told her. It was the usual list—sleep deprivation, time distortion, stripping him naked, standing him in the sun for hours and then refusing him water, denying him medical treatment. The man had stayed firm.

I might have pitied him our prime interrogator's extended attentions, except for the fact that one of our supposedly-secret scouting parties had been ambushed at the border of the Plaguelands and dragged over the mountains and into the forests beyond. I sent out search parties after them, but it was all the same: nothing, nothing, nothing. They had been sold, and from within. You could hear the lost crusaders screaming in the hills for days.

"Inept," Sally announced tossing her hair like a filly. This was her condemnation. And even LeCraft flinched before it.

* * *

><p>This is how LeCraft began, under her gaze:<p>

There were no hooks in the ceiling, a fact that irritated Sally to no end, so we were forced to improvise. I held the door, sword drawn, while the soldier and LeCraft undid the prisoner's shackles and dragged him to the centre of the room. His hands were already bound; his feet were tied together with the rope, and then his legs, at the knees, the calves, the thighs.

"Tightly, young man," Sally said. "If they break, I will hold you responsible."

LeCraft, who was older than both of us, swallowed and tied them tightly. The manacles were reattached, so that the prisoner was fixed to the wall again. I wondered aloud why we were not taking him to the interrogation chamber outside. Sally gave me a withering look.

"Let them see," she said, jerking her head towards the other men. "It will be an educating experience, I do not doubt."

I did not doubt it either.

"You." She pointed at the soldier. "Undress him."

He swallowed and looked at me, helpless, but I nodded to him to obey.

The three worked with their knives, hacking off the last of the prisoner's tattered leathers; I saw Sally remove what must have once been armguards, her hands gentle and efficient. _The royal physician, _I thought. _The pride of Lordaeron's medical college. _She even pursed her lips at how thin he was, shaking her head.

"He has a wasting sickness." She looked up at me. "It's fortunate I arrived here."

She didn't say it, but I knew. He didn't have much longer to live; we would have to get what we needed this evening.

"It will be harder to work with this." She nodded at the soldier. "Bring the bucket here. Then guard the door with High General Abbendis."

"You don't need my assistance, I take it?" I said, ironic, as he and LeCraft worked.

"No." Her forehead creased as she frowned. "A single hand is adequate for this. It is an inelegant solution, but Isillien employed it to some effect."

We watched her as she instructed LeCraft, my little recruit and I, spectators of an esoteric art into which neither of us had been inducted. As Sally murmured, LeCraft pinched a handful of skin on the prisoner's forearm, roughly, and he whimpered. He knew better than I what they would do next. The knife. The rope. The bucket. Even then I thought LeCraft was just checking his health, he and our solicitous not-doctor, thought that until he brought the edge of the blade to the bulge of skin and pressed.

For a moment I was confused, scandalised. _You are killing my captive!_ I almost yelled when the blood welled beneath the blade and the prisoner screamed into the silence, but LeCraft's hands were as steady as Sally's eyes and he pulled down on the handle, peeling away the skin as he went, a line as fine, as confident, as impartial as a butcher's. The skin curled like a sheet of wood. The ropes went tight where the prisoner tried to jerk away; they held.

"Well-tied, young man," Sally said pleasantly, before her face distorted and she yelled down, "Are you ready talk now?"

He wept and screamed, but he didn't plead. He didn't speak. His noises were wordless, unintelligible. I hated him for it, for keeping his secrets and keeping us here, and I wondered whether Sally did not feel the same as LeCraft took a bulge of skin on his arm, near where he'd cut the first, and peeled it off with his knife, this time more slowly.

Beside me the soldier wavered on his feet. I caught his forearm in my hands and gave him a warning look.

And the other prisoners, you ask? Did they struggle? Did they intercede on his behalf?

Of course not. They sat there, fascinated by the impeccable, medical horror of it, grateful that it was not them, afraid to move, afraid to speak, afraid to breathe too loudly in case they caught Sally's attention and it was them under her knife next. It is incredible, how animal humans can become. It is the most horrific thing I know.

"High General?"

The young soldier's eyes were wide and white, and I knew he was asking me to intervene, wondering whether I did not find this barbarous, monstrous, cruel. For a moment he reminded me so much of myself I was disoriented, feeling as if I had lived this moment before and forgotten it. And then I remembered: I had. In Hearthglen, watching as Isillien lashed Jones, his whip rising and falling until droplets of blood sprayed the walls Crusade-red. Yes. And I had been horrified too.

I was not that girl any longer. I watched LeCraft flay a third strip of skin from the prisoner's body. I felt oddly in possession of my faculties. If this was terrible, it was less terrible than the Scourge.

"Fetch a healer," I said. "Inquisitor LeCraft is tired. I fear his arm is not as steady as it usually is. We don't want our quarry dead."

He looked at Sally. _Is she not a healer? _he was asking, silent.

"No, she isn't, not anymore," I said, giving him a gentle shove. "Go on, child, and make it quick."

He hesitated; I saw him glancing back over his shoulder towards where LeCraft knelt. His arms were strong and fluid, and he pulled the knife the way fishermen hauled in nets. Perhaps he'd been that once, too. So many things we were, and all of them gone.

"Go on," I said again, nodding, all the while keeping my eyes pinned on Sally, bent over her victim and her student, the two of them becoming steadily less human by the moment. White and red on red. The dirt floor was damp, quickly turning muddy; LeCraft's hands were gory up to the elbows, and I wondered how he could keep his grip. Another moan from the prisoner nearly made me jump.

"Remember," I said, tearing my eyes away from the scene. "The Light rewards those who serve."

* * *

><p>LeCraft worked slowly, diligently, and his effort was more than effective in the end. Still, I was annoyed to notice that night had fully fallen by the time we stepped out of the bunker, the lamplight shining from the town ahead of us and making a halo where the summer clouds hung low.<p>

I had no idea what to do with Sally; she had been successful, and yet in my eyes she was transformed. At night, underground: all these things could turn the beauty into a monster. Revulsion, wonder, fear.

"Do you mind?" she asked outside the gates to the town.

I shook my head, confused. In answer she raised her bloodstained hands, gleaming black in the darkness.

"Oh, of course not." I gestured at the stream. "Go ahead, High Inquisitor."

She sighed, and I knew she was unhappy at our rustic surroundings, but she bent forward to clean her hands in the river, giving me a good look at the tops of her thighs. Once I'd have leered like a wolf; now I simply looked away, lost in thought. Suddenly I was sad—the sweetness of victory had soured in my mouth. The horror never stopped following us. And I had the sudden fear that it never could, because we brought it along, inside ourselves.

"I would keep an eye on that boy you brought with us," Sally said over the splash of the stream. "He was… not entirely persuaded."

The Crusade's inquisitors are nothing if not single-minded. One duty performed, and already she was thinking of her others.

She rose, wiping her hands on her robes. They were bloodied too, I noticed; I hoped she'd brought something else to wear. "He thought us quite cruel."

"We were quite cruel," I pointed out.

Her eyebrows knitted together. "We did what needed to be done."

"Yes." I cleared my throat, suddenly fascinated by the latticework of a nearby climbing bougainvillea. "We always have."

The air between us seemed to harden, and I imagined that if I'd exhaled I'd have seen my breath.

"Safe in your virtue, Brigitte," she said, "as always."

"What the fel does that mean?" I said.

"It's a pleasant fiction. The one you tell yourself. That you are good while those you order about are bad. Though it's at _your _order that the axe falls."

I set my jaw. "Don't tell me what I think."

"You think? I am pleasantly surprised." I took a swipe at her with my fist but she leaned back. "Always with the violence! It's because you have nothing left to say."

Where I clenched my jaw, pain flashed through one of my back teeth. "I do what I have to. I don't delight in it."

"Nor do I." I could see her white lashes through the darkness, fluttering rapidly. "Nor do I." She wheeled away from me, facing out over the ocean, and then, as if I weren't wary enough of her, she screamed, "Fuck!" into the darkness. She did this several times.

"Don't swear," I said. "The villagers will hear, and it's not nice for the children."

She turned back to me, and I nearly took a step backwards at the fury in her gaze. "The abomination that reigns in Northrend isn't nice for the fucking children!"

"Sally, listen to me—"

"Perhaps the High General does not have the faith required to serve the Light fully."

"Do _not_ interrupt me, High Inquisitor." I jabbed my finger into her chest. It was sticky; I prayed with sweat. "I may not be Grand Crusader yet, but I am—"

"Yet?"

The word fell between us. I had erred, I knew I had erred, and yet I could think of no way out. To say less would have been treasonous; my slip was madness. Sally watched me, and I could not help but think how predatory she looked, training her sights on my face. I had stumbled.

She closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. When she opened them she was controlled again. "It seems I am not the only one with other interests."

"My interests are the good of the crusade." It was my turn to be toneless.

She tilted her head. "And no personal power at all, yes? Power and glory and wealth are nothing to you, am I to believe that?"

I could have killed her with my bare hands, or at least I thought so at the time. I could have taken her head in one hand and her neck in the other, at the throat, and twisted and twisted until she died. But I did not. Why? Because I knew that she would struggle and perhaps win? Because I knew she was no threat? Or something else? Something in the rage and despair of her voice beneath her cool, detached words, as if she wanted nothing more than to scream and break down and all she could do was stay silent, watching, always watching, trapped behind glass.

"Believe what you will," I said. "I remember my father."

She nodded. "The original High General Abbendis." My face was still under scrutiny, but her expression had changed. "He was… a great man, Brigitte. I admired him."

I have been told this so many times, since even before he died, that I am sick of hearing it. No one wants to be reminded that their namesake is more than they are, even mouldering in the grave. And yet when Sally said it, something moved in me. It is hard to find the words—I do not know what happened—and yet I found my throat tightening, and I struggled to swallow. _He was a great man_. I worshipped him for what he was, you understand. But I had loved him. He was my father before anything else.

"Thank you," I said, and hearing my voice, remembering who I was, brought me back to myself. "That's good to hear."

I do not know if she noticed my slip. She said nothing of it, either way. "I'm dying of thirst." She looked around towards the encampment, everywhere but at me, and nodded in the direction of the pub; embarrassed by her outburst, as I was by mine. "If I act the drunken priest, will you excommunicate me?"

I forced a grin that felt thick and nauseating. "No." I placed my arm on her elbow, and I couldn't tell whether she shook, or I did. "Forget the pub. We have to talk. In private."

* * *

><p>We drank together, too much and too easily, wiling away the night. I have never been indulgent, and I rarely drink, but that night, sitting across from Sally, I was suddenly acutely aware of my fears and my memories. Four years—was it really so little? And yet I had grown up so much. I had grown old, tired, sad.<p>

The sun had been down for hours and we were sitting at my desk, I behind it, she in front of it, sipping finger's widths of brandy from tumblers. The Light says nothing against drinking; it also says nothing about female leaders and promiscuity and kissing seventeen-year-old girls under your command. But I would be a fool to think these things had no moral content, and I thought of them all, and I drank all the more for it.

"Renault was worried," Sally said at one point late in the evening.

"Rightly so, it turns out."

She cocked her head, giving me a reproving look. "You never liked him."

I tossed back another glass, downing the contents in one gulp. Was it the third? The fourth? "You liked him enough for both of us. Light knows why. He was petulant."

"As were you."

I frowned at the top of my desk, fire-marked and ragged. "Was I really?"

She only smiled into her glass in response. Two glasses to my four—I was pulling ahead. But she was drunk enough that her teeth clinked against the surface as she drank, and the noise made me wince in sympathetic pain.

"The dead can't defend themselves," she said.

"And neither can I." Maybe I'd had more than four drinks; I tossed the glass onto my desk and it rolled on its side, spinning across the uneven surface towards the ledge. Sally caught it, mid-fall, before it could shatter on the floor. "Defend myself, that is."

She rose to her feet, sinuous, all the crispness of her position lost. Her patrol of the room was slow, and I watched her.

"There are no pictures in this office," she said. "I had assumed you were the sort for decoration."

"There will be," I said. "One of the lieutenants is an amateur artist. I commissioned a portrait of Father from him."

"Yes." She stroked her glass, absent as she stared at one of the walls: blank, no window, just rows of piled logs. "It might be desired to have a picture of one's parents."

She had never mentioned hers before. It was when her heart ached the worst that she spoke the most distantly, with the most abstraction. But I only realised that later, and by then it was too late.

"Are they dead? Your parents, I mean."

She turned towards me. "Yes."

But there was something in her pale, pale shoulders, the way she pressed her fingers to the cup so hard that I could see the ridges of her fingerprints through the glass. I knew not to ask.

"I might also get a severed troll head stuffed and hung over the fireplace."

She laughed and the tension dissipated. "You will make a poor wife, Brigitte Abbendis."

"I have better things to worry about."

"Like stuffed troll heads."

"Yup."

Her eyes twinkled. "And becoming Grand Crusader."

I clamped my mouth shut and glared at her, warning her off the topic.

"No, you are ungenerous with me," she said. She moved behind me, circling, and while my head buzzed I thought, insanely, of sharks in the reefs of Kul Tiras. "I think you will make a magnificent Grand Crusader. I will chain myself to your rising star. We'll be spectacular." She brushed the back of my neck and my tendons fairly snapped with the difficulty of staying still. "But you are not that woman. Not yet, little Brigitte."

I moved my mouth; no sound came out. Licking my lips, I tried again. "I'm not little."

Her breath tickled my ear. "But you are, in your father's shadow. Just as I am little in Isillien's. That shames you, doesn't it?" I nodded. "It ought not. We will go where the great brutes cannot. The little places where the Light gets in. 'Most blessed are children, for they hunger after but small kingdoms, and with but small kingdoms are content.' Alonsus Faol said that."

There was so much I wanted to say at that moment that I was paralyzed and stayed silent. I could feel her nails through her gloves, pressing crescents into my skin, and I could feel the heat of the fire on my face, the coolness of her hair on my neck. I wanted to say: None will stand against us. I wanted to say: There is greatness and horror in us, both of us, but especially you, and I will need you then. I wanted to say: I need you now, and I needed you when I was younger, and I have needed you all my life.

What I said was: "Do you remember Brother Harol?"

I felt her tense, a little surprised. "Yes. Why?"

"He saw us, that day in the library. You know, when it was raining. After you slapped me for talking rudely about Renault. Do you remember?"

She had gone very still behind me, as if frozen. I turned to look at her and found her face stony, her eyes unseeing.

"He told my father."

Her skin coloured so vibrantly I nearly laughed; it looked like she was trying to camouflage with her robes. But I pitied her and I stayed silent. It had been agonising for me, then. It was agonising still, but the pain was different now.

"Oh, Brigitte, I'm—I never knew. I am truly sorry."

Beneath my pleasure at finally cracking her perfect detachment, I thought, _He didn't punish you for that?_ And then, again, another piece sliding away from me, another part of my father I could not reconcile with the greater puzzle of him.

Sally was not paying attention to me, lost in her own thoughts. "I was mad that day, to act as I did. Was he very angry?"

"Furious."

"Truly."

I allowed myself a grim smile. "He hit me with a riding crop."

I remembered the tears on his face, the line of blood across my knuckles. The dust and the filth. His power and his love, one and the same. The crackle of the fire somehow seemed unbearable now, and I could not listen to it any longer. I rose and turned. I was in shadows, she in firelight: orange, red, gold against my charcoal and grey. I reached out, took her forearms in my hands—bare, the skin smooth. So different from my sun-leathered, scarred body. "He's dead, though."

"Who?" She was breathless as if she'd been running for miles, and her chest rose and fell steadily. "Your father, or Brother Harol?"

I waved a careless hand. "All of them, Sally. Who's left?"

Her look was hard, and I realised how much older she'd become, and I realised that she was still a child as I had never been, near a decade older than me and still so young, and suddenly I had my doubts.

I released her, then; it was she who reached for me, gripping my shoulders in her hands.

"We are," she said.

* * *

><p>I can see your expression so clearly. You want to know how I could possibly still care for her, the bloody monster, with her doctor's bag of interrogation devices.<p>

She was not always like that. Just as I was not always like that; nor was my father, or Isillien, or Saidan Dathrohan.

In the King's City, the great cathedral of Light dwarfed everything around it. I went there every day as a little girl, my hand in my father's, and the day he joined the Silver Hand, and the day I joined. Standing there, awash with light, feeling at peace, for though I was old enough to know that my father would not always protect me, I was young enough to think that Lordaeron would live forever. King Terenas watched, not from the royal box but a pew near the front, his guard arrayed about him. He smiled at me. How could this man, old, kind, powerful, the king and yet smiling at a little girl, ever fall? What could destroy the combined might of men and faith?

Men and faithlessness, of course.

I haven't seen the cathedral since. Even if we could force out the undead, even if we could scrub it clean, sloughing away years of dirt, grease, neglect, regret, bad memories, it would avail but little. Even if the stained glass could be repaired. Even if all the stones of the foundation could be realigned, the roof patched, the broken candlesticks replaced.

Places have memories as much as people. After a while, the colour of the light as it travels through glass shifts with the age of the material. And you can polish the windows all you like, scrubbing them until they shine, but the damage will always be done. It cannot be reversed. It will always be old, tarnished, yellowed, and the colours will always blur, and the face of the mother as she kneels at the altar, beneath the great _L_ of Lordaeron, beneath the silver fist and the crowned sceptre of House Menethil, will always be disfigured, as if she has been weeping.

We were disfigured by what was done to us. I know that, though I seldom accept it. It is a hard thing to admit—that you are smaller than you might have been in another world. That you have not always chosen well.

* * *

><p>That night must have lasted lifetimes, aeons beyond measure, eternities piled on eternities preserved in the span of an hourglass's turn, because when I reflect on it it seems to loom large in my life. It swallows everything that happened before and after, as if all else—the destruction of Lordaeron, my father's death, the fall of New Avalon, the creation of the Onslaught—was the blink of an eye, a daydream in a world that was just Sally and I, her hair and her arms and her lips, and that was all there ever was. The firelight. Her hands. My hands in her hands, my hands in her hair, her hair across my throat.<p>

I took her in my arms, pressing my palms against the curve of her back, and she leaned into me, her fingers stretching around my neck. Her mouth was soft as flowers, and I parted her lips with mine, roughly, touching her tongue against my own. Her white hair spilled over my arms. I wondered whether there was still blood on her hands from earlier, and pushed the thought away. Then I wondered whether she was drunk on pain or brandy, and whether it mattered.

I was not wearing my plate, only my leathers, and I stepped away from her to pull them over my head—gracelessly, as it happens, since the neck got stuck on my chin. Sally found this uproarious.

"Not all of us can wear as little as you," I said.

"You should." She moved to sit on my desk, perched on top of my papers, and her skirt slid up around her thighs. She recrossed her legs, giving me a good glimpse of the shadow between them. "Recruitment in the Crusade would give even the Lich King pause."

"Don't joke about that," I said. My voice must have been gruff, because she fell silent and opened her arms for me again. I struggled out of my pants, first, but at least this time she did not laugh. I left them in a heap on the floor, falling into her, lost and hungry, hungry and blind, kissing her as if all the world would be unwoven and she was the only thing remaining with any stability to it.

She linked her legs around my hips, pulling me down by the shoulders to kiss her again. I stroked her hair, her silver hair, and the curve of her breast beneath my palm, and the faint shade of ribs beneath that. No warrior, this.

"Ah, High General," she whispered. "Such devotion."

"You have seen nothing," I said, and took her hands, pulling her off the table so that she was standing. My papers slipped and fluttered across the floor, swept by unseen currents. A mess. I dismissed it, reaching for the buttons at the back of her robes, admiring the long, sinuous line of her back, the flare of her buttocks beneath it. I pressed my fingers to the knob of her tailbone.

The robes were samite with a corset of bones sewn into the bodice, and I might have cut through it with my dagger but I found I could not. They were Sally, and the office and its title as much as anything else. Not purely ornamental.

There, in the shadows cast by the fireplace and the snap of embers cracking in the grate, I pulled off her robes, tugging them over the curve of her hips when they bunched and stuck. Her hair was like starlight and her face looked like china in my hands, and I thought that I could smash her with a touch, but there were stretchmarks on her belly, and a long jagged mark that reached from her sternum to her hip. Tenderness. It was new to me.

Snow and sugar and white wool—I was thinking these insane, irrelevant things as we lay down on the floor. The wood was unsanded. Shards of it caught in my skin, tugging at cracks from salt and the sun, wearing into scars I'd thought healed. Pain on one side, her on the other. How appropriate.

I pulled her on top of me so that we were skin to skin, her hands weaving a trail through the marks on mine as I felt her face, smearing her eye makeup. We kissed again, and again I pulled away, regarding her above me, casting a shadow over me, the shadow itself, dark in the firelight.

She pulled out the clasp that held my hair bound and I felt it fall around my ears. "Much better," she whispered, lifting handfuls as if weighing gold. "You're far more beautiful like this."

Her fingers traced the swell of my breasts, the ridges of my nipples, sliding down to count the notches of my ribs. From far away in some dream world I could hear her speaking to me, a voice that I'd thought was my own, like a clarion call. I stroked her flank, her thighs. I spoke too, though I do not know what I said. I touched her throat with my mouth, the curve of her waist, the place where her navel dipped. I lowered my mouth to her core, flicked my tongue against her, and she trembled, taking handfuls of my hair—and so much for gold, don't you know—thrashing, one leg kicking out from beneath us. Her skin was silvered with light and spit. The hair on her head was silver, but between her legs it was black, and wet from the wetness of her.

She breathed hard, cheek pushed into the rug, and I slipped up to curl into the circle of her arms. With one hand she rubbed my neck; she licked the fingers of the other and lowered it between my legs.

"No," I said, pushing her away. "Not me. Please."

She looked up at me and raised her eyebrows in surprise, but whatever expression I wore was enough to convince her. She stroked my waist instead, her fingers icy cold. "As you wish."

"Do you want something else to drink?"

"No, thank you."

"Are you hungry?"

She looked at me in indulgent amusement, and I suppose it struck her as odd that I should be bashful after the fact. "You have become quite chatty. There are other uses for that tongue."

"I'm sure you've thought of them."

"Your father said I was a genius." Her eyes gleamed. "I intend to prove him right."

"Please don't mention him." I closed my eyes. "Please, please, please don't."

"Yes, the late High General is doubtless rolling over in his grave."

"He was cremated."

"Isillien is rolling over, then. Or spying, the lecher."

I stared at her in horrified disbelief; she shrugged.

"It is what I would do, in his position."

"Sally. _Don't_, please please—"

So she rolled onto her back, turning around until she'd positioned herself under me, pulling my thighs apart. Her tongue parted me, searing and cold at the same time against the heat of me, and I leaned forward, gasping, eyes unfocused. Probably drooling. I clung to the tassels of the carpet, and it was definitely me speaking this time, blaspheming, no doubt, uttering filthy oaths that could make the Light blinker out. What a joke.

Afterwards we dozed, curled up on the rug, wrapped around each other, my legs thrown over her stomach. At one point I woke up, shivering, to find her standing naked in front of a dwindled fire, prodding it with a poker. I watched her back, and I wondered at her. At us, and myself.

"What is it like to torture a man?" I said. My voice was loud in the quiet.

She looked over her shoulder at me. "Am I to believe you have no first-hand experience?"

"I hunt necromancers and undead. Torture isn't that useful."

"True." Her gaze met mine in the darkness. "You get used to it. Mostly."

I patted the ground next to me. "Tell me."

She came to sit next to me and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, leaning into the crook of her throat. Her breasts were rising and falling under my chest.

"The smell of burnt skin is the worst," she said.

"Is that what made you sick that day, with Isillien?"

She shut her eyes. "Yes. There was a woman down there. A girl. He burned her with a poker, like that one in your fire. The sound was like a blade being tempered with water."

I turned my head so that I was looking up at her, her red eyes. They burned like fires, like the one dancing in the grate, like the fire that will cleanse this world in the end times. "How do you deal with it?"

"I tell myself now," she said, "that it is the smell of justice."

"The Light and I will reward you," I said, because I did not want to hear any more, and brought my hands to her breasts again. We tangled. Again the fire died, again the shadows crept across the floor, reaching for us, and I did not think of dungeons, the smell of earth and despair, screams of pain that became inhuman.

We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour of that night was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did.

* * *

><p>Too soon, as it happens. I did everything in my power to delay her departure, coming up with endless issues to discuss, papers to sign, land to consecrate… you get the picture. Three weeks later she had to leave. We did not part with a kiss. It would not have been appropriate for lords of the Scarlet Crusade, even had we not been women. We had to be strong, and part of strength was seeming that all you were was the Crusade, your heart its heart and nothing more.<p>

We clasped hands instead as we parted, the only hint of what had happened between us the way her gaze rested on me with unprecedented warmth. And then I released her hand, and she, mounted, turned away. She moved with her escort down the dirt road, clouds of dust rising behind them even in the cool of morning. I never saw her alive again.

But you know this part, don't you? I'm sure they whisper stories about it in Stormwind and Theramore and Kul Tiras, perhaps even in Gilneas. The only thing they love more than the lives of beautiful women are their deaths.

Maybe you were even there when she died. How can I be sure?

Generally I find the cold purifying; I am not alone in this. I have enjoyed the summers in Hearthglen where the apples grow fat and rich in the orchards and the bees buzz over the meadows and lake is so cool it begs for swimmers. But I have also felt the close, choking humidity of the Plaguelands as the sun beats overhead and I sweat in my armor, the soil reeking. The air in the mountains afterwards feels like a blessing, as if it is sluicing away all the grime and muck.

The cold in Northrend is different, as is the cold the Sally lookalike brings with her. It's not invigorating but deadening and profound, more like the chill of a fever, half a burn. I touch my forehead and curse. Am I freezing or too hot? It's impossible to tell.

I stalk past the sentries standing guard at the doors and they glance at me, postures snapping straight. "Late night, High General?" one of them calls to me. He sounds worried. I ignore them all.

The night must be glacial, I can tell from the way my breath crystalises in the air, the way the stars look so bright and close and vivid, yet I can't feel much of anything as I make my way to the shore. Shock. I must be in shock. It happens to the soldiers sometimes.

The sea is a mirror, reflecting the stars, so still I am temporarily surprised. Where are the waves? Some days it's so choppy that the sailors tell me the ships are in danger of being tossed aground against the rocks, stranding us here forever. Just as Arthas stranded his men in Northrend once. But no. It is better this way.

The beach is stony, not sandy like the one in the Scarlet Enclave, and the steel of my boots offers little purchase against the sheet of salt and ice that coats everything. I stumble, barely feeling the jolt in my legs. The sea beckons. I should be able to find the wind rising off it, bitter as a coal against bare skin, but I can't. I can't even make out the horizon. Sometime during the night the wind has gone down, the sky has cleared. It's completely still. Stars above, stars below. As I approach, I catch the glint of some glowing fish beneath the waves, darting like electricity.

I have thought of this many times since I left New Avalon for Northrend. Many times, reflecting on the mess my life has become, the failure I've made despite all my opportunities. Better to be lost in the infinite oneness of the Light. Better not to fight or struggle.

The first step into the bay and the water rushes through the gaps in my greaves, seeping through my wool socks. They cling uncomfortably to my toes, but other than that I feel nothing. Another step. My armor weighs me down, makes me awkward. I have to strain all my muscles to keep from toppling over.

Another step, and the metal joints of my leg armour go stiff at the knees, protesting against my movement. Will I sink first, or rust, or freeze? A strange statue, frozen solid and covered in sea ice for the fish to nibble. I laugh, loudly, at all the constellations, the sea around me, the blue-green arc in the sky above that is the colour of the ocean in the south, the ocean in the north dying against the sky, evaporated, invisible.

_I was never as cold as you were, Sally. I was a creature of blood and heat. I couldn't be what you were, though I tried. I wanted to be._

My waist. I feel the first bolt of cold, cutting through my midsection like wire, and for the first time I notice the way the water swirls around me, stiffening to a fine layer of ice that melts away as soon as I pass. Am I the thing that's so frozen?

_If you were with me now, I would know what to do. The men. The forsaken. Westwind. New Avalon. It wouldn't seem so bad._

The water is up to my neck and I am blind, blind and wild, and I tear at my hair, and on my lips there is blood, and against my teeth. My arms splashes into the water, shattering the perfectly still surface for miles; the wave crests and breaks against me. I taste salt. My face stings. Am I crying? Or is it just the sea?

The undertow tugs at me, insistent. As if I were a little girl again, and a friend is jostling my shoulder. Sally rubbing my neck. _Come. I have to show you something. Come_.

Are the tuskarr possibly right, for all their barbarism? Does the sea have a voice that can whisper and cajole? I imagine I can hear it now: Come sister, come. Come and sleep with me and never fear the lonely shadows again.

* * *

><p>But I am not other men—I am Brigitte Abbendis, of the line of lords and warriors, paladins and priests, and I am better than that. I did not bring my people to Northrend to drown myself like a lovesick pup. I did not leave those who needed me behind to fail.<p>

I back away from the deeps, nearly slipping. My armour will be absolutely ruined, and my boiled leather jerkin. My skin will be cracked and broken tomorrow from salt and cold. No matter. These things are transient. Only the Light and its judgement are eternal.

I plan to be judged well.

When I get back to the steading my chamberlain stares at me, his lips parting.

"High General—"

"Don't," I say, raising a hand in warning, and it is enough. He falls silent, but I can feel his eyes on my back as I pass.

Will they think me mad? They thought it of Isillien. Of my father.

Inside I struggle out of my plate; the edges are already stiff with salt and ice from where the water has frozen against them. I get a look at my face in my looking glass with a jolt. My hair is a mass of icicles, threaded together, and my skin, normally healthy brown, is tinged blue. My lips have turned grey-violet. I am a wreck.

The chamberlain sticks his head around the door, and I am about to yell at him when I see he has brought with him a pile of blankets, tall enough to bury a child.

"Leave them here," I say, gesturing at the floor. He glances at me but obeys and, still silent, goes to tend to the fire. It has gotten low. I'd not noticed.

He glances over his shoulder at me, and suddenly I remember that night, irresistible. Sally, naked, looking over her shoulder, her skin cloth-of-gold beyond price. Beautiful and whole. Beloved.

"You are not even a little bit cold?" he asks, brow furrowed.

I stare at him. It is only then that it dawns on me: no, I am not cold, not in the slightest.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Thank you to those of you who are <em>still reading<em> despite the indecent amount of time it's taken me to produce this. I mean, wowee. What a wait!

Next chapter is the very last one, and it will hopefully be up much sooner.


	6. Chapter 6

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Thanks to **Dusty the Umbravita**, **Berrinc**, **an extreme fan of - me** [so glad you're enjoying it], **Keniaia**,** Nyieni**, **Stargazer** [hope it wasn't TOO squicky! I definitely, er, tend to get carried away], **Aelfin**, **Fantasy Fanatic** [ha-I guess I always thought she had the same designer as Ysera and Lexxie to save money], **Opalescence** [hope this tides you over!], **Anonymous** [glad you're enjoying my shipping-in fairness, Warcraft doesn't provide a HUGE number of possible shipdoms compared to some fandoms], **Astriea**, **thrallsgirl291** [love the name ;)], **Nerissia**, **Illusenia**, **XXXXXXXXXXX** [I think a word got lost there-were you going to say that he's a sneak? A jerk? A total s.o.b.? Because those are all true! NO SPOILERS THO PLOX], and **XMistmantleX **[thank you for being patient; I'm so sorry I took so long with this, and I hope you're still sticking around!] for the reviews! I am so touched that all of you took the time to give me feedback. Thank you so much, again!

Warning(s): For references to F/F romance (as always), some pretty graphic battle violence, and mentions of/non-graphic depictions of torture.

I should add at the outset that I originally believed that this fic would be six chapters, and that's it. However, having written and edited the final chapter, it became 20k words, which, as you know, is too long for a fic where the average chapter has heretofore been 4-6k. So I've divided it into two.

Also, for some reason, this website is turning my double-dash into a single dash. I have no idea why, and nothing I do seems to work, which obviously is hell for readability. HI! HI! HELP!

Chapter: 6/7

* * *

><p><strong>VI<strong>

The places on my hands and arms where the skin turned frost-white and peeled away are finally beginning to heal-when I move I no longer feel the tug of pain, no longer have to fight the urge to wince. My body is reknitting itself after my nighttime madness. Entire hours pass where I do not have to think of my injuries. I am becoming new again. Being reborn. The wounds are healing to scars, and scars can be forgotten.

With it, my mind feels stronger as well. I am certain the Light has been testing me, certain, now, that I have passed through the gauntlet. The Light's call has been absent for so long, but when I reach for it, kneeling alone in the cathedral the morning after I nearly drown, it at last answers. With hesitation, at first-slowly, as if unwilling, and I have to order, tug, force. But it comes all the same.

Assured again, I can turn myself to what we came here to do. The lumber mill runs more or less constantly; the blacksmiths work eighteen-hour days producing armour and weaponry, and though the number of accidents among them increases, their output is doubled. My men and I are in the war room until well into the light spring nights, and I feel as if I am moving at last-as if the nightmare in which I found myself mired has been obliterated with the change in seasons, the change in me.

I need no one. Only the Light. And now, once more, like friends parted who have undergone a long absence, we are reunited, and I know a joy in it that is all the stronger for having suffered its loss.

I have LeCraft working tirelessly. He tells me the dungeons are filling up. Let them overflow. When the Light finally sears the filth of the world in its great bonfire heat, all will be consumed and destroyed.

I welcome it.

* * *

><p>With my certainty comes the realisation of how close we have come to disaster, how nearly my lapse cost us everything. Our foes are everywhere, and among us, at the very pinnacles of the Onslaught's leadership. Machinery destroyed, disease outbreaks among the lower-ranking recruits, a general fall in morale. The trebuchets were sabotaged; it was only Westwind's cunning that caught it. Westwind, Westwind, Westwind. He is stronger than I. He has not faltered.<p>

Could he replace my Sally?

Lying in bed at night I imagine it, his strong body pressed alongside me, atop me, into me, his burning eyes fixed on my face. I try to imagine him between my legs, naked, expression twisted, grunting. It is no good. I think of his shining pate, the patches of white around his head, and wonder whether the hair on his body is likewise white. It makes me want to snicker, and afterwards, in the morning, rather than being ashamed of my lusts, I am amused. He becomes a caricature to me. Grotesque and laughable.

* * *

><p>Work makes the months fly by, and I would not notice the passage of the seasons-everything here is stunted as if dead from the cold anyway-only the change in light makes them conspicuous. I have never before thought of the way in which the night can engulf us. Endless darkness, hours of darkness, with only a brief flare of light on the horizon after lunch, as if staring through the narrow bars of a prison. No wonder the pagan elves worship the sun.<p>

But now it is spring, fading into summer, and although the summer is nothing at all like those in New Avalon, so sweet and rich, the air scented with bees and hyacinths, Northrend, again, surprises me. In the hills the stunted firs are brilliant against a brilliant, cloudless sky, and there are wildfire lupins everywhere, explosions of colour at the edges of the buildings.

My step is buoyant as I head down the hill with my escort towards the cathedral. The air is still chill enough to require a cloak, and the breeze tousles my hair and cools my cheeks and tastes like the sea. This does not seem like the place where I almost died. Surely that was something I dreamed. Perhaps I dreamed everything, and this is the Crusade: strong, beautiful, alive, flourishing. Perhaps, if I were to look hard enough, I would find my father and Sally together, faces flushed and eyes sharp, ready to laugh at my foolishness for thinking heroes like them could ever die.

"We should pray this day, together," I say aloud as we pass beneath the shadow of the church's towers.

From the corner of my eye, I see one of the soldiers smile. They are unused to this, the lighter side of the Crusade-and of me.

I think of her: _This is my moral function._

Westwind is already in the cathedral, standing at the end of the massive hall constructed to hold hundreds of kneeling worshippers. In my worse times, I thought it a needless indulgence; now I know that it is a sign of our confidence, our expectation of victory. One day, Northrend will be a forest of temples like this. And then all Azeroth will, finally, be a monument to the Light.

"Am I interrupting you?" I ask him when we are face-to-face. The light through the stained glass turns him red and gold, makes him beautiful. I wonder if it makes me beautiful, too.

His lips quirk. "Not at all, High General. I was lost in my thoughts. We ought to talk about pushing into the Citadel soon."

"Soon," I agree. "The canons need to be checked, and the men should be made marching-ready. I want to send the scouts around Zul'Drak and look for alternate routes. I don't care for the idea of a frontal assault on Icecrown." I feel Westwind watching me, feel his smile, possibly indulgent. "What about launching the attack from the sea?"

"We would need ships. More ships than we have." I meet his eyes, and he _is _smiling, but in that way of his-it does not warm his eyes. "Are you so eager for another go at your sea legs?"

"No." The thought of our voyage over makes me feel light-headed and queasy all over again. "But I'm less eager for an attempt to bring down the walls of Icecrown, or trying to burrow underneath it. Ships or walking, we won't avoid that. Better to arrive there in one piece."

"Ships are the wrong strategy, High General. I tell you this with all respect-only the kvaldir brave the ocean around Icecrown, and we ought to avoid them as much as we'd avoid the Scourge."

I come to a stop immediately below him and look up. As ever, his face is unreadable. "You sound like you have an idea."

"I do," he says. He leans forward on his arms, well-muscled for an old man-well-muscled in general, really. Again I wonder why I do not desire him. "I don't expect you to care for it."

I care for nothing that has to do with Northrend, so his words barely stir me. "I'll hear it anyway."

He leans further down towards me, his voice dropping. "The Nerubian tunnels."

My first thought is, immediately, _Absolutely not_. But I am proud. Instead I say, "Myths."

"No." He gives me a sideways glance I cannot read. "Not myths, High General. They exist, and I know where they are. Some of them, anyway."

The thought makes me feel as if a stone is rising in my throat. The darkness that swept over me has only so recently faded, and I am not eager to face those endless tunnels, scuttling with creatures invisible in the gloom, the earth pressing in above me. "Even if they are, how could we find our way through them? How would that get us into Icecrown? We'd get lost down there and that would be that."

He gives a careless wave of his hand. "I can lead us through."

"You?" It comes out as an incredulous bark, and though he does not move his eyes narrow slightly. "None of us doubt your knowledge of the land, least of all me, but the Nerubian tunnels-"

"Are like anything else," he says. "Knowable."

_Not everything is knowable_. I make myself smile, but my face feels numb. The Nerubian tunnels are the stuff of nightmares, campfire stories the old soldiers tell the new recruits. Some say they are as deep as the mountains of Azeroth are high, teeming with unknown civilisations, unified only in their hatred for the world above.

"We'll discuss this further," I say. "It's not a solution, but it's something."

The cathedral seems very dark and close all of a sudden, cold. I try to grasp some of my prior lightness, but it has slipped away from me: down long tunnels that are two-parts grave. When I speak again, my voice sounds heavy. "And we should discuss it soon. LeCraft has gathered intelligence on the Alliance and Horde's manoeuvres. We should expect them to launch their assault within the next month or so."

"I suspected as much," he says. "You can see their markers all over this land, if you know where to look. They're like elekks, smashing around in the jungle and surprised when they bring down predators."

Perhaps it's stupid of me, but I feel some sort of rebuke in this-is he suggesting that I should be able to figure out such things for myself without LeCraft's intervention?

The sting makes me critical. "Elekks?" I say. "When have you seen an elekk, Admiral?"

To my surprise he actually starts. "I have heard of them," he says. "Only from stories, you understand."

"Of course," I say, "it was a jest."

He watches me for a moment, guarded and wary, and I wonder what to say to ease the tension between us. I cannot make myself turn away from him-not out of respect but out of some deep primitive sense of self-preservation, an awareness of the fact that he is dangerous.

But dangerous to me? Impossible. I cannot believe it.

"Will you pray with me?" I ask him. I have to force the words out, afraid they will only provoke.

He doesn't respond, save for a slight relaxing around his fingers and shoulders. "No, High General. You will have to say your prayers for me."

I do. I kneel in the enormous emptiness of that hall, facing the Crusade's cross, and I call on the Light, trying to feel some of that warmth I'd felt earlier. But I do not beg it. Begging is a sign of greed; we, its servants, are ever grateful. So I am grateful, even as I feel a gnawing absence in my gut, even as my throat tightens as if I will cry. A dash of the thing is better than none at all. Some of my brothers and sisters are not given even that.

I begin as I always do-with thanks that feel hollow. Then I pray for forgiveness for my soul, and Westwind's, and Bishop Street's, and all my followers', even LeCraft's-though LeCraft will have to make his own bargains in the nightlands, that much is clear. And then, when I have gone through everyone I can name, I pray for mercy for the dead: Isillien, and my father, and Sally. Most of all, Sally.

_Let there be light where she is_, I pray. _Let there be eternal daylight that no sun-turn chases away. Let there be clean water and good land, and let there never be any terror there. Let her be at peace, and unafraid. Let her heal, as she never could in life._

I am so lost in my thoughts that I do not register the commotion immediately. It is only when I hear the doors slam back on the hinges that I come awake, moving to my feet before I can register it. My guards are all around me, have never left, and I do not draw my sword. The soldier at the door is unarmed, leaning against the frame, trying to catch his breath.

He looks at me. He looks terrified.

"High General. The Scourge."

There is a moment of perfect silence around me, into which I say, stupidly, "Now?" And then I hear myself and feel like a fool. Of course now. Why not? When have they ever spared a thought for our convenience?

I reach the entrance to the cathedral before Westwind, but he is right behind me, my guards behind him. The wind is still blowing off the sea, and I am even more grateful for it, because it carries the familiar charnel-house reek of the Scourge away from me. Now I see the fires in the distance, at the edge of the forest, and I can imagine the line of artillery behind it. With the sky so clear the flames seem to give off no light and heat, as if they are made only of crepe paper, pretend and nothing more.

"They're clearing the treeline," one of the soldiers says.

I want to strangle him for his vapid, obvious comment, but I satisfy myself with turning on all of them and barking orders as we move. "You five, go to the barracks and muster the men. Tell them to form up. We need to move the canons and trebuchets into position. Lath, get LeCraft into the main hall and tell him to start preparing with the other priests for the wounded. Tell the other captains that any man who dies is to be burned _immediately_. We need boiling oil on the wall. Thonas, run there and make sure it's ready and the archers are in position. Lylin, head down to the docks, tell the captains to make ready for us in case we have to-to flee." There, I have said it, and I pray that in doing so I have prevented that eventuality from coming about. "Keep the faith, trust in the Light, and stand strong. We fight with righteousness, and the righteous are not conquered."

_Not,_ something in me whispers, _that that was much comfort to King Terenas_.

When they have scattered, Westwind and I move towards the fighting to reconnoiter with my officers, and I am finally able to let some of my dismay show. Now the smell is upon us, impossible to ignore: dirt and rotting skin. "How the fel did they get here? I didn't hear anything, not a single report-"

"That's not what concerns me." Even Westwind is not as composed as usual. He runs a hand over his face. "Damn and blast it, how did they find us?"

"Frostwyrms," I say. "We've seen them at the edge of the forest for weeks now. It was stupid of us, we should have realised what they were." I give my head a shake, clearing away the daze I find myself slipping into. We are coming into view of the stables, and I am pleased to see that the scouts are mounting up, though I do not let it show. "Never mind. It's too late for regrets now."

At least the weaponry is in position, and we have been having drills for this event for months now. The groups around me are not, precisely, moving with confident grace, but they are moving into their designated positions. I mount the steps that lead up to the inner walls, edging along the narrow wall walk and trying to navigate the bundles of bolts and arrows, the now-boiling cauldrons and men. The trebuchets and canons are moving too slowly, though, and I don't like the pace at which the artisans are fortifying the door.

"How does it look down there?" I ask Lieutenant Sirth.

She hands me her looking glass. "Not good, High General, but see for yourself."

I do. Sure enough, they're burning the forest, not with regular fire but their terrible cold blue flames. There are lines of the things, a sea of shifting grey-green and pale white bodies, naked and rotting; I catch a few abominations that tower over them all, and their mountainous siege engines. Those are made with one purpose only. "By the merciful Light."

"Let's pray it's that, High General," she says as she takes it back from me. "Merciful, that is."

It has been, in a way. "They're at the back," I say. "They're going to have to camp and organise to send them through to the gates. That will take a few hours at least. We'll fortify. Keep your men up here and harry them, and if you love your skin, Sirth, you'll get those trebuchets in position _now_. Focus your oil on the abominations when they come." I start to leave, but turn back suddenly remembering. "And don't waste it. This might be a long siege."

She salutes and leaps to obey before I've even turned away, and I wonder, with a wryness that is wholly inappropriate, whether she's more afraid of me or the Scourge.

Westwind is waiting for me at the bottom. I would like to go and yell at the artisans to hurry up, but fortifications are not my strength, and anyway I have other places I am needed. Service to the Light is service unending.

The officers are gathered in the basement of one of the smaller watchtowers. They're all there save for Bishop Street, who will be commanding the raven-scouts, and Harlin and Rowe, who are with the archers.

They stand when I enter, at attention if not precisely proud. Most of them are dishevelled, sweating as if they have run, and Father Davory is pale and trembling. I give him a disdainful look. He's on the verge of collapse, too old for military leadership, flagging in more ways than one. But on the other hand, he knows his way around a battlefield, if only from reading books.

They give me their reports on the preparations. They have followed our plans as best as possible, given the circumstances. We are to bolster ourselves behind the gate, protecting our numbers and trusting to our superior stockpiles while risking as few men as possible, raining fire down on them from above, striking out on quick, darting attacks. We have enough supplies to withstand a six-month siege. I do not say what I am thinking-that the Lich King has never had to wait six months for any stronghold to fall.

"No wyrms yet," Abathea says. "That is something to be thankful for."

I've noticed the same, but rather than thankful, I am puzzled. "They should be here. It's not like them hold back. Where are they?"

"Another siege?" Davory suggests.

He sounds too hopeful, and I know it is the hope of a born coward, but I find myself carried along with him. Yes. If we are being targeted, why not others, more powerful others? Why should we carry this burden alone?

"Perhaps," I say. "Let's pray they're strong, whoever they are. The longer those wyrms are gone, the happier I am. Stone can withstand fire, but men aren't quite as tough." I stand, signifying that we are almost done. "Any sign of the Forsaken encampment?" It's beyond hope that they join in the fight, but their presence might divert some of the Scourge attention away from us.

"We'll have to wait until the scouts return," Sister Abathea says.

_If they return_, I think, but I say nothing. I place more hope in our ravens: far harder to take one of them down than a man on horseback, crashing through the ice. Once more, Westwind's unorthodox techniques may prove our salvation. And I am ungenerous to find his strength so utterly tiresome.

* * *

><p>I am right about the siege engines-they are slow moving, even with two abominations dragging each, and the hordes of undead are too mindless to move out of their path. A few times, when I stand on the walls with Harlin, I witness the sight of them rolling over a cluster of unwary bodies, splintering branches and bones alike. But while he laughs, I am unsettled. Piety, righteousness, the Light-these are well and good, but the Lich King has something we will never have. Numbers.<p>

The rest of the day passes in a blur of preparations. Bonfires are lit around us for heaping the bodies up if-when-the Scourge penetrate the gates. The recruits draw lines of oil from one wall to another, enchanted to resist frostwyrm breath and ready to be ignited and turned into makeshift barriers once the wall is breached. I make further contingency plans with a particularly pious sister that I feel no need to share: our stockpiles of gunpowder in the cathedral are to be detonated rather than allowing the place to be defiled. She gratefully volunteers to be the one to strike the match, and I accept.

The scouts, of course, do not return, but though I know it is futile I wait for them, pacing in my office and in the officers' meeting room. I meet again with them as we eat at the bottom of the tower, picking over our rations of dried berries and cured meat. I have no appetite, my stomach twisting with the feeling that despite our good fortune so far something is terribly wrong. But I tell myself it is just more of my winter-given madness, and I force myself to eat, chewing methodically until my jaw is sore and everything is mush.

I continue to do my rounds of the compound, ensuring that everything is in position and that the men are not wavering. No matter how wary and exhausted I feel, I must be their strength. No one can know what cracks and fissures I have hidden beneath this exterior, even if, perhaps, they have begun to guess. My face is a flawless iron mask, as flawless as Sally's flesh.

The night is well on us when I finally locate Street, up in the bell tower of the smaller church. The sky is brilliant with stars, and it is almost winter-cold again. The compound is bright around me as I climb the stairs, but beyond its walls it is a sea of moving darkness. I shiver at the thought of being out there, isolated pinpricks of life in an ocean of Scourge.

"Clear night," I say as soon as I spot him. It's a blessing and a curse, for his ravens most of all. We won't be surprised by frostwyrms, but we are not invisible, either.

"High General Abbendis. I hope the Light has been kind to you this day." He bows, more a curt jerk of his head than anything else, as if realising how stupid his comment is. Street is not one to stand on ceremony. With his cropped-short hair and his black-and-white beard, he looks more like a mercenary than a priest. "No sign of the scouts?"

"None at all. Your ravens aren't back, are they?"

He works his mouth as if chewing. "They fly with their own mind, High General."

"Just say 'no', next time, Street. It's easier that way." He sets his teeth and nods again. "Answer me honestly: what's the probability they're dead?"

He gives a shrug and say says: "High."

The darkness must hide my wince. Well, that's honesty at least, but it brings me scant comfort. We're sightless right now, and this night is no help.

Somehow, heading down the stairs is more tiring than climbing up: my legs are heavy and aching from the endless striding I've been doing, and my eyes keep sliding closed. For a few moments I am walking, dreaming, before I jerk myself awake. I have no notion of the time, but it must be hours after the midnight. I should sleep, yearn for rest, but this is not the time for it. If I am too tired to walk, I can still sit.

I don't return to my office but to my personal quarters. My guards take up their positions outside the door, though they look nearly as tired as I feel. My map of Northrend is still there, on the wall, and I lean back in my chair, regarding it. I should start applying pins to it for ours and the enemies' positions as they are doing at the gates, but the writing seems to slither before my eyes, and I lean back, squinting, trying to make sense of what I am looking at. There is a headache starting behind one of my eyes like a band of hot iron around my head, pressing in on it. Trying to decipher my handwriting only makes it worse.

I turn away, towards my papers, determining that if I cannot study our positions I will do something else productive. I go through the list of our priests, determining who can be taken aside for healing duties if it comes down to it, who should be sent to sent to the front and who left in the healing wards.

I don't realise I've fallen asleep until I hear someone saying my title from above me. I bolt upright, one hand going to the arm of my chair to steady myself, the other reaching for a weapon I am not carrying. I have a moment of consternation before I realise that it's a runner, scarce more than a boy, chest rising and falling and looking tense, jumpy. As if he expects me to run him through with the sword I don't have.

"High General," he says again. "High General, you're needed urgently at the northern gate."

My head feels full and heavy, my face sticky. I've probably been drooling. I can't seem to focus on what he's saying. I give him a blank look.

"High General, please, Brother Rowe sent me." I notice that he's wringing his tabard between his fingers, creasing the cloth, and want to tell him to stop, but his next words jerk me awake. "The Scourge have moved into position."

I rise, stiff. "Run back to your sergeant. Tell him I'll be there shortly and I'll expect an update." I've barely finished speaking before he salutes and darts off, his footsteps echoing across the stone pathways. It's only when he's gone and I'm struggling into my plate that I realise I have no one to help me dress, and I let my armour fall with a clang to the floor. I choose light mail instead, telling myself that it makes no difference to the Light how we are attired. Wasn't Renault Mograine wearing his finest armour when he was beheaded?

Outside it is darker than ever, but I wave my guards away as they begin to throng around me. Their presence, as ever, is suffocating. The sky is heavy with clouds now so that each lit torch barely seems to pierce the gloom. I dare not run for fear of tripping in the pockmarked road. My nap has not invigorated me-if anything I feel even groggier than before. I give my head a shake to clear it, but even as I reach the northern wall I am disoriented, and the sounds of men around me are like the shuffling of invisible monsters. The steps are narrow and precarious under my feet, and I stumble up them in complete blackness, totally blind to the wall beside me, the sky above, and the ground, unyielding and perilous, below.

Before the torches atop the wall are visible I can hear the group leader's voice, at first faint but growing louder as I climb, his repeated barking of, "Fletch! Draw! Loose!" After each triplet the air is filled with the sound of rushing. I press my hand to the stonework, rough, hastily done, the mortar scratching my skin like dust, and I think of how foolish I am to be here, alone in the darkness, walking up the face of this wall. My honour guard _should_ surround me. I am too stubborn. It would be a simple matter to hurl me from the steps to my death below.

So I am grateful when the first light falls over me, however dim Rowe is keeping it, and more grateful still for the solid steadiness of the stone beneath my feet. There are more than a few of my men gathered at the top. Harlin has been relieved but Rowe is still there with the only torch on the wall for yards. I barely have time to hope we have enough hot oil to make it through the siege before Westwind is standing before me, completely unrumpled and completely awake.

"High General," he says. His body seems to take up the whole wall walk. "Is it wise for you to be here?"

I shoulder past him without answer and head towards the brazier and its warmth-the nights are still cold for the season, and the sleep sweat chills my skin. I clutch at the mug one of my underlings hands to me, grateful for it even when it turns out to be full of some weak broth. At least it is hot. "What's going on?" I ask Rowe when he joins me. He looks like he could use some sleep himself.

"Nothing good," Rowe says. "The siege engines are almost in position, and they've brought friends."

I take the spyglass from him and turn it on the masses below. All I can make out are their wheeled towers, now mere yards from the gate and closing fast, and beyond our lanterns the forest and its shifting, hidden infiltrators. My mouth is dry. The broth, for all its tastelessness, was too salty. But I force myself to say, lightly, "All that for us? This monster isn't for half-measures." I scan the darkness for something else, but see nothing. "They haven't tried to scale the walls?"

Finally, a grim smile. "There are too many little beasts in the forest for that. They're climbing over each other and blocking the engines and those damned steeds. And abominations can't scale walls."

I allow myself to exhale. "You've done good work here, Rowe. Keep up the barrage. Let's knock some of them off while we can." I don't mention that no death among the Scourge ranks is ever permanent. Our victories tonight are their numbers tomorrow. And even at this distance I can see that the siege engines are wholly untouched. No need to ask why. They glint with that evil metal the Lich King favours in everything, harder than diamond but light as flint. Instead I turn to the abominations. "How's the hot oil treating them?"

"Bad, but the horrors know to avoid it. And the engines-"

"I know. The knights wear it as well." I remember them so well from New Avalon, strong as warped steel, twisted and remade, almost recognisable. "Keep a store of hot oil in reserve for them when they do close the distance. I can guarantee the geists are going to try to make a climb. Do you have knives for their ropes?"

Rowe makes a helpless gesture. "There are only so many men on the walls, High General."

I don't sigh. I know what he means. I've seen them at work before, though only at a distance, the masses of them teeming as grappling hooks shoot from below like tentacles from the deeps, more than we can count. "How long do you think the oil will last once they're in place?"

"If we ration it, perhaps three or four days. I sent down to the kitchens for cooking fat. I thought it was worth a shot, High General."

Finally, an underling who doesn't need his hand held constantly. "It was worth a shot," I tell him. "Be sparing, but not too sparing. Hot oil isn't going to help you if they get up here or behind the walls." I pat him on the back. "Good work, Brother Rowe. The Light smiles upon you this night."

He looks, incredibly, more uncomfortable than pleased, as if I have just made some sort of embarrassing indiscretion. He keeps his eyes lowered as he clears his throat and says, "Thank you, High General. With your leave, I need to see to my men."

I wave him away, a bit nonplussed by his response. Does he think it inappropriate that I invoke the Light's favour when we are barely out of the Lich King's grasp? The thought gives me pause. I am not so certain I don't find that inappropriate myself. I feel it again, the sudden gnaw of doubt as if in my heart an emptiness has opened, a gap where all the shadow floods in. Standing in my little pool of light I am aware, suddenly, of how I cannot see anything beyond it, not even the figures of my archers, only the repeated call of fletch draw loose and the sigh of their arrows. Suffocated by darkness. Lost and blind again. I step away from it, into the night, but my eyes are too dazzled. I still cannot see.

Behind me, Westwind says, "High General, it is not safe for you up here. I urge you to return to your quarters."

I nearly lose my temper, but I know it is only my own fears and doubts speaking through me. Instead I satisfy myself with defiance. "I don't answer to you, and my place is here." With my men. On the frontlines of battle. Not hiding and fleeing like a shameful coward, terrified of the grave.

I can't make out so much of his shape, but his pause speaks to me of doubt. For some reason, that is gratifying. That I am not the only one who knows what it is to question.

* * *

><p>I do manage to sleep after that, but my dreams are grim. I am travelling down, always down, through tunnels that press in around me, narrowing with each step I take. The soil is frozen hard, and it scrapes my arms and thighs, leaves streaks of dirt on my mail. I want to turn back, but I feel eyes on my back, a presence old and vile and nameless in its horror. It pushes me on, makes me run. I feel its mind bent towards me like a whip. But I am never fast enough, and the darkness is cold and makes my bones ache. I feel dirt on my face, across my eyes. I taste it on my lips.<p>

Despite my sleep I am weary when I return to the northern wall. Street has resumed his duties in the rookery with the few ravens that have returned. Now, he has news, but the set of his face warns me not to hope. He tells me of a battlefield to the north that smokes with acid so strong it can burn through saronite, and of a field of bodies-human and scourge, elven and dwarven, even the monster Horde races-a league across, and the toppled corpses of frostwyrms, abominations, dragons, nothing but skeletons stripped of their meat. "I saw it," he says, even paler than usual. "It was a massacre. The forces must have come down from there directly, taking some route we don't patrol."

The crows caw and look pleased as he speaks. No question but that they've feasted well tonight.

"I thought they wouldn't move for another month. How could this have happened without our knowing?" Street asks. "Why didn't we march behind them?"

I wonder the same thing, but not for long.

"The tunnels you mentioned," I say to Westwind when I see him again. "Could the Scourge use them as well?"

He stares at me for a moment, unblinking. He looks as composed and fresh as ever, alert, his gaze sharp. Meanwhile, I am beginning to come apart. My thoughts are slow, my vision blurring, but I must have this out before I finally allow myself to collapse.

"It is possible," he says slowly, "but not likely. High General-"

I cut him off. "You were aware of this possibility, I take it. How long have you known about the tunnels?"

He lifts a hand, heavy and awkward. "Myths, as you say."

"Not myths, as you say. You knew them. You knew the possibility. But you said nothing. Why?"

For many long, long moments, he is silent, and we stare at each other. At last he speaks. "I don't know."

"That's no answer." I shiver. There is so much more I need to know, so many things I must ask, and I feel anger, terrible and raw, tearing its way through me, but down below, as if churning its way up through layers of ice. Nearly thirty hours of pure tension is too much, even for me. "I'll have more from you, later. But for now, I have to return to my office for a while."

There is something in his gaze I that chills me as his eyes flick over my face. Perhaps it is because his expression does not change once.

"Who would you have command in your absence?" he asks. He has the gall to ask even that, with our-my-subordinates all around us. He is looking at me steadily. I can read him plainly for the first time since we have met. He kept the knowledge secret for his own advancement, and this is his chance, his chance to usurp me. He will rise as soon as I turn away, and wipe out all traces of High General Abbendis. And when I wake, no one will answer to me.

I wonder whether he planned this. How much. For how long.

I long for Isillien. I long for Sally. Someone to lean on, someone to trust, no matter how ugly the necessities they deal in.

I make my voice steady as I speak, and loud, so it will carry over the wind and none can later pretend they did not hear me. "Bishop Street will have command, with Abathea and Rowe's assistance. Fetch me if the situation changes."

I am not looking at Westwind as I say this, but from the corner of my eye I see him turn towards me. I am almost afraid to see him. There is a moment of surprise among the gathered men, and I wonder if they can tell that the ground has shifted here, but then Rowe salutes and one of the pages dashes off to fetch the bishop.

Now I look at Westwind. He does not seem angry, does not seem to be feeling anything at all. His eyes are on my face, his expression blank. The face of one hiding schemes. Blank to conceal, carefully, the calculations turning over beneath. And I know that I was wrong to believe he was different, wrong to believe him sent by the Light. I cannot trust him. I cannot trust anyone.

"Seize him," I say.

He does not so much as flinch when the soldiers obey. For their part, they do not hesitate. They are used to the twists and changes of the Crusade, used to seeking corruption everywhere. But Westwind stares at me, pinning me in place.

_I am not so easily conquered_, I think to him, wondering whether he will indeed know. It seems possible at the moment. "Admiral Westwind is to remain in his quarters until given my summons. No one is to see him except for me, and I want no one going in or out. Six soldiers are to stand guard at all times." I register the surprise on their faces-it is a kingly array indeed. "Now get him out of my sight."

Westwind does not look at me as they lead him away. Their hands seem small, almost childlike, against the bulk of his arms. I wonder how it is that they can restrain him so readily. But he goes without fight, picking his way down the steps, though this would be the place to make his escape. I notice this, and wonder what it means that I think his passivity odd.

* * *

><p>The days when I hid all my wealth under the floorboards are gone, though I certainly had those times, too. In my office, behind my father's portrait when I lift it from the wall, is a safe, warded with all the Light's enchantments and all the strength of brute matter: a foot of fireproof steel on every side and a combination lock.<p>

Inside it is a heap of papers: legal documents, mostly, giving me my right to this ruined house or that farmstead, deeds to villas in Lordaeron that are choked with weeds and plague, ownership of some red mare who probably carries death knights into battle now. I pull these out, toss them aside. The things underneath are dearer: my father's journal, worn so badly from being read and reread that the leather cover has come away from the binding. I can recite it by heart, but I still hold it gently. There is a crushed grey glove that might once have been black, and has the initials_ CB _written on its wrist. It is for Catarina Bar-el, my mother.

I take that out, too, and then I take out the bottom of the safe. I have no jewels or gems or gold. The only thing I store there is a lock of long white hair, yellowed now with time, bound at the bottom in a blue ribbon. The blue is alien, strange. It is a colour from a life neither of us ever lived.

I carry them-journal, glove, lock of hair-and place them in my now-cool brazier. My hands are steady, and I do not cry except for when I strike the match and the smoke climbs, making my eyes sting. Then my vision blurs, and my face flushes from the heat.

The fire catches quickly. The edges of the journal blacken and begin to smoke, and the glove curls in on itself, as if there were fingers still flexing inside. The hair burns first, and fastest, but the ribbon remains for a while, stubborn and steaming. I wonder if she ever wore it and I wish, suddenly, that I had pressed it to my face one last time. I wonder if it might have smelled like her.

I sit in my chair and watch the fire until it burns itself out. Then I rise, and I chose my sword from the rack on the wall. The edge is sharp, the grip perfect. She is gone, I tell myself, testing the balance with a slash. She is gone, and Father and Mother are gone; their eyes are worms, their bodies are dust or ash. They are gone where Arthas can never, never touch them. For good or ill, they are beyond my power to hurt or save. And now, no part of them will ever be defiled.

* * *

><p>Word spreads as fast as plague in the compound, and I can see my officers watching me warily now, the soldiers guarded. I know what they are thinking-the battle's first purging, the first blood-letting. Westwind was the first, and if he could fall, who else will follow?<p>

I do not know whether it is anger and insubordination I feel crowding around me, or fear. I will not let myself wonder. At least Bishop Street has been competent, though he seems as uncertain as I. I hope I am hiding it better.

_Strength_, I pray to the Light. _Give me strength, and certainty, and courage. I am your champion, your instrument. Please, help me serve_.

In answer, the Scourge at last begin their barrage.

When the siege engines throw their weights against the wooden gate it is as if the whole world has come apart. The wall shakes and jumps beneath my feet, and dust is rising all around us, and a few men too near the edges fall, screaming. The sound of wood splintering is so loud I feel it in the center of my chest.

"Fortify that gate!" I yell down at the assembled soldiers and engineers in the space between shockwaves. They are already working under Davory's commands, and there are obsidian support beams built across it in such a way as to keep it from buckling as long as possible. Still, with every blow it bends more and more.

Atop the walls we do our best to eliminate the bulk of the army. I wish for guns, for harpoons, for a thousand things we do not have. The trebuchets do not work at such close range, but as the geists send their hooks up the wall we rain oil on them, hack off their ropes, send arrows down into the masses. They climb like animals, single-minded and insensible to fear. But with my men and I fighting shoulder to shoulder along the wall we are matched in our numbers, and most of them die before they can reach us. It is almost heartening, if I can ignore the hordes beyond number waiting below.

Then, abruptly, they stop. The last of the geists slide down the wall, and there is a lull in the siege engines' barrage. Beneath the sighing of the wind one of the knights seems to be yelling something, though I cannot catch the words.

"What language is that?" Rowe wrinkles his nose. "It sounds almost like Common."

It isn't Common, that much is clear.

When they begin launching a barrage of their own I am momentarily surprised, though I find myself quickly enough. My legs are moving and I am throwing myself against the stone of the wall, even as it shifts beneath my feet. I do not know if my men can hear my voice over the rain of dust and the crack of stone, but I hear myself, muted, yelling, "Cover!"

Around me they obey, and a warm body brushes against mine, cloth against my arm. I fight a shiver. But the sound of the impacts are soft, almost wet, more like the falling of a great rain than the landing of blows.

I rise slowly and look at the walkway, then lean over the walls so I am staring down into the courtyard. There are spots of gore against the stone and dirt, smears against the walls. Near my hand, a mass of something black-red and yellow slides down the stone work, trickling blood after it. Contagion? I dare not touch it.

"High General," Rowe says from behind me.

I turn. More of the carrion meat is flying over the walls, and at Rowe's feet is another wet mess, this one scraggly with hair. It looks like a cat's sick. I nearly snicker at the thought. Is _this_ the Scourge's offering?

Then Rowe lifts it, wordless, twisting his wrist so it's facing me, and my laughter dies. A human head, eyes rolled back, mouth gaping. I recognise the short ashy hair and goatee, visible even through the gore. There are slashes across the cheeks, and shards of bone below the neck. The whites of the eyes are huge and bright.

I understand then. At least some parts of our scouts are accounted for.

"Never mind," I hear myself say. I'm surprised by how steady my stomach is. "Throw him on the pyre down below. This is one the Scourge will not have." I swallow, forcing myself to be calm. "And I want the walls and the courtyard scrubbed. I'm not going to have the Crusade's grounds filthy with entrails."

I leave the wall after that. My feet seem to barely touch the stairs. Everything seems strange, the sun's brightness making the stone and the messes around us gleam.

_Why not boulders? Why not bombs, or plague, to kill us all?_ There is too much happening here that I do not understand. I feel the currents of it swirling around me, beneath me, labyrinths beyond number and measure, teeming and shifting with each step I take, untraceable. I wonder whether Isillien was right, whether I am too young for these duties. I long for Westwind's council suddenly and sharply. And then I remember, and force myself to stop wishing for him, as I have stopped wishing for so many people before.

* * *

><p>Sister Abathea thinks the gate will hold for half an hour, and that this is our window for organising. In reality, it holds for longer, but her guess is fortuitous, because after that point the barrage begins anew, and this time, it is of a more standard variety. Paving stones, raw metal that explodes into shards on impact, metal balls that burst and spray acid, chunks of iron dipped in kerosene and set ablaze. I maintain control of the men as best I can, but when I see LeCraft his face is haggard as it has not been before. From the basement of the fort the sound of moaning rises, and our well-ordered ranks shift and shimmer, twisting and threatening to come apart.<p>

"Will they hold, High General?" Abathea asks me.

"Of course," I say, and make it sound as though her question is an imposition, a grievous lapse of faith.

But I am completely unprepared when the wall finally falls.

The sound of it pierces me to my core, and for a moment my throat is tight with dread, and the ground seems to tilt under me. My knees turn weak, my skin cold. I recognise this as fear, distantly, from somewhere far away, and it enrages me, but no matter what I think I cannot force it away.

Then Davory, still standing at the front of the rows with his men, falls in spray of blood, thrown backwards by the force of the blow. The front of his chestguard comes away when the hook is jerked free, along with most of his chest.

I don't quite know what my battle cry is, if it is words or a long, enraged scream, but then the battle is joined. My men roar back, around me, and the Scourge are surging over the remains of the wall, geists with their spidery fingers, mouldering undead still wearing the clothes they died in, massive golems dripping ichor and held together with that foul steel.

They move forward with all the mindless efficiency of the tide, covering every inch of the ground-grinding it to mud, surely, for one of our horses falls mid-charge, screaming. I have a moment of consternation-did we not tell them charging the Scourge was a pointless suicide gesture?-but I can't spare a thought for the fool. Around me the priests are calling down the Light on the masses, as indistinct and bright as sunlight through clouds, but where our men rise the Scourge shriek.

Our ranks have break in record time. Behind me, I hear the sound of wind, a whoosh that means the lines of fire have been lit, yet another barrier for the Scourge to cross. A geist at my elbow shoots towards me and I turn, cutting it down over my head mid-leap. Another follows it, but this one I dispatch with my sword's point, pinning it to the ground and then taking off its head. Its legs twitch.

I move with the rest of the masses of soldiers towards the church, as we had planned. I have to step over still-moving Scourge corpses. At one point something grabs my ankle, but when I look down after taking its hand off it is one of our soldiers, dying in the mud. His midsection spurts blood, and I take him out of his misery with a cut to the heart. His is not the first body I must avoid. So much for burning our dead.

These are the lesser monsters of the Scourge, and they are easy enough to dispatch, relying more on numbers than on wits. A more or less intact undead attempts to parry my blade with its own, but I am faster, my balance better, and I carve it open from neck to groin. It rewards me with a spray of black blood all over my armor. Something splinters and crashes in the distance to the sound of screams.

Near the church, the animal enclosures have already been trampled. I vault over a felled log and race past a pig that is snuffling in the dirt for food and unaffected by the chaos around it. The Scourge are as oblivious to its presence as it is to theirs. Another monster dies on my blade, then another. I no longer know what orders I am giving. I do not feel tired from the effort of lifting my sword, from running and leaping, not yet. Furious energy still buoys me.

My men are not having such an easy time of it. We are desperately outnumbered, and many of them are ignoring their flanks, running ahead into the open where they are unguarded. One of the soldiers before me parries a blow, then is brought down from a cut to the back by another undead. I dispatch both of them, more irritated than angry. My blade is sticky and black with blood, and no matter how manys time I flick it, however violently, the stuff clings to like tar.

I am trying to wipe it off on a bale of hay when behind me is a roar. I wheel around, lifting my sword into a defensive position, ready to fight, and find myself face to face with an abomination the size of a house.

Its mouth is sideways, full of blunt teeth, and its arms squirm. One of the soldiers is still being dragged behind it, trapped on its hook, his head bouncing off the stones. Its masses of blue and green and grey and brown and black eyes blink at me, out of sync, angry and curious and afraid. Its skin is a patchwork of grey and mouldering green. Around one of its countless arms is tied a red cloth, and on it is visible the Crusade's cross.

Make that _all_ our scouts accounted for.

I am so busy gaping that it takes me a moment to register the loop of its hook arcing behind its back and then towards me. I throw myself out of the way just in time, taking mouthfuls of dirt in the process, my attempt at a roll becoming more of a headlong dive into the mud.

By the time I make it to my feet, choking now and trying not to gag, it is coming towards me again, dragging itself along on its mismatched legs. My guards are nowhere to be seen-torn away from me or fled, I don't know. I leap aside from the hook's downward blow, not quite fast enough this time. Its point rakes across my shoulder-guard in a shower of sparks. Metal screeches against metal, and then, with a yank that makes me feel as if my whole arm will come off, my pauldron bends, rips.

I am tugged along with it, to my knees. I lift my sword to parry another blow from the hook, but my arm comes to a jarring halt, the metal of my armguards screaming against it before I can lift it over my head. This time the hook tears across my face, denting the metal of my headguard, bending the nasal, yanking my lip up until it tears. Its point skids across my eye socket, over my eyelid in a line of black and red.

I somehow force myself to my feet, leaning on the point of my sword. The ground moves beneath me, and I am aware, suddenly, of how utterly foolish the whole thing is, that I am facing off against an abomination alone. It's dispatched with the hook now, is lumbering towards me. Fleeing is the wisest course of action, but my legs feel so weak I don't think I can make more than a few steps towards the church. I lift my sword again, and it sways in front of me.

From behind the monster golden light blooms, nearly blinding. The thing shrieks, halts, turns away from me. As it does so, I see the now-tattered red robes, the high white hat, yellowed from dirt and sweat. Bishop Street.

Street looks wearied, but as the abomination reaches out for him he sidesteps it, dodges the hook, dives beneath another fumbling arm. He is like a dancer, sure and graceful-a dancer among mud and blood and pig shit, of course. But the abomination is focusing on him, now, avoiding me. As he doubtless intended.

No one can hold off one of these things alone. I take one step towards it, then another. My eye is swollen shut, and my face throbs, my torn mouth aching, my ears ringing from the blow. Still, I do not falter. I lift my sword, angled for piercing, and make the best approximation of a running jump I can manage in the circumstances.

My head is still swimming, I can only see out of one eye, so my aim is uncertain. Instead of slicing through its neck, my sword pierces its back, high up, beside what on another creature would be the shoulder blade. It howls and spins around, trying to see where I am, but I cling to the sword embedded in its back. My weight drags it down as the abomination moves, carving through its rotten skin. The sensation is of drowned flesh, fat and swollen. I feel maggots moving beneath the surface in places.

It falls before I have reached the bottom, dragging me with it. I find myself in a puddle of ichor and rotten blood, the smell of meat gone bad so thick around me I can taste it. My sword is stuck, and no amount of struggle will free it. I abandon it; not worth the trouble, and so wholly defiled.

Street is standing a ways off, watching as I stagger towards him. He still wears his usual contemptuous look, but his face is weary, and there is worry in his eyes.

"Well done," I say when we are within speaking distance. My vision is darkening and brightening; I fear I will faint. I do not thank him. Duty requires no thanks.

"Your eye, High General," is all he says.

I touch my face. My fingers come away smeared with blood. I am not entirely sure it is mine. Opening my eye is agonising, but I can see. "It'll be fine. It's a skin wound."

Street says, "Not if it gets full of plague-blood."

A fair point. I wipe away some more blood. It gleams crimson against the steel on my fingers. "The men?"

"Retreated to the church, en route to the cathedral. The ground is sanctified there, and LeCraft is running the infirmary. We'll make another stand."

More blood is flowing from my mouth; I remove a greave and yank off my ruined pauldron, then probe my lip with my fingers. It seems to be in worse condition than my eye, a tear that stretches up from above my eyetooth to beside my nose. It is deep, and will scar badly. I can picture it already, tugging my lip into a perpetual sneer. No longer so beautiful. But then, what are scars but battles fought and survived?

"The casualties were heavy," Street says. He's also staring at my face. "Quite heavy."

"We expected that," I say. I would like to ask more, but the pain is radiating from my mouth to all parts of my head. The words sound slurred. I wonder whether the hook cut through tendons. "I'm going to go see LeCraft myself."

I don't have to ask or order; Street knows his duties. "Let me help you there, High General. The bulk of the forces have moved on, but there are still a few stragglers."

"No," I say. And because he grimaces, more than out of any real sense of politeness, I say, "Thank you, but it's unnecessary. Go with the rest of the men. I need you there."

He opens his mouth, probably to dispute with me, but I turn away before he can.

I avoid the main route back to the cathedral, picking around the backs of buildings, staying in the shadows. It is shameful, and I would like to kill more of the Lich King's minions, but with each beat of my heart I feel my face throb so painfully I have to stop a few times and press my head between my knees. I know I will not survive a confrontation with even a sewer rat in this state.

My diligence is rewarded, at any rate. I am within a single sprint of lumber mill, the cathedral's steeple visible in the distance, but the area around it is teeming with undead, so thickly I would have to shoulder my way through. I lean against the wall of the barracks and watch them, trying to devise a plan, when I hear my name.

"High General Abbendis!" a woman calls.

My heart flutters, and I am confused for a moment. Between the shaking of my knees and the fog in my eyes, I am dislocated, lost in time. Her voice is strong and certain, loud over the shouts in the distance. "Sally?"

"Over here!" she calls again, and I see her running towards me: tall and dark, lovely, imperious-but not Sally. Sister Abathea, with a troupe of bloodied and tired healers trailing behind her.

"It's good to see you," I say.

She just gapes as she comes up to me. "What in the name of the Light happened to you?"

I touch my face again. The blood has hardened around my mouth; I taste it on my teeth. "An abomination."

She swears. "You're lucky to be alive. Is it dead?"

"Yes," I say. I lean more heavily against the side of the wall. "Street and I did it."

Abathea finally seems to notice my state. "You need to be treated." She raises her gaze over my head, scans the horizon. "The cathedral is unreachable at the moment. I can help you, a little."

"My mouth. If you would."

She reaches up to inspect it and lets out a low whistle. Her fingers are gentle. I see the lines of weariness on her forehead, around her mouth; one of the tight rows of braids atop her head has come loose, leaving a halo of hair around it. "I can heal it," she says, "but it will scar."

I would like to say something cutting but I'm too exhausted. "Just heal it, Sister."

Her hands are warm with the Light, but as it touches my face again it stings, almost as if I have been burned. I set my jaw, but my eyes water.

"Done," she says. Her eyes are still fixed on my mouth. "You must be thirsty, High General."

I feel better now, not quite so unsteady, and I am thirsty. "Parched."

She gestures at one of her underlings and he hands her a canteen. It sloshes as I take it, and there are only a few gulps of water left in it. "We'll need more," I say when I hand it back empty.

"There are reserves around the compound," she says, not voicing the addendum: _if we can reach them now_.

"We'll worry about that after." I gesture at the cathedral with its shifting ring of Scourge. "That's our goal right now."

Abathea eyes it, looking doubtful. "I don't suppose you have a plan for getting in there, High General?" Her tone is wry, but her eyes are bright and steady. Light help me, she really _does_ think I can save them.

I pull a face. "How's your digging?"

A few of the men chuckle.

"I do have a plan," I say, "but the risk of failure is high, and you may be safer out here than attempting it. But I need to get in, whatever the cost."

"We are with you," she says, not missing a beat. I wonder whether her men appreciate her volunteering them for this. If so, they're smart enough not to show it.

I point to one of the guard towers a ways off. "We're going to use one of the crossbows up there to send a rope into the cathedral. Then we'll slide in. Simple."

One of the men says, "Hopefully there _is_ a crossbow."

Hopefully. And hopefully the tower isn't overrun. And hopefully there are arrows of sufficient strength and quality. And hopefully _someone_ among us has the aim to fire into the cathedral and strike something that will allow us sufficient hold to carry out our plans.

Abathea's doubtful expression grows to one of grave concern, the lines on her forehead deepening. "Do we _have_ rope?"

"We do not." I force a grin, if only because I don't know what else to do. "Tabards off inside, brothers and sisters."

I did warn them that it would be dangerous.

We duck across the road, now torn up from the motion of abominations and meat wagons, the galloping of our horses. The paving stones the Scourge hurled at us have left massive craters in the ground and we wind our way around them. I still feel lightheaded; occasionally I lose my balance at the edge of a particularly large hole and have to right myself with a jerk.

We are a small group, and we manage to cross the open road without drawing the attention of more than a few undead. I don't even attempt to engage them. Abathea's men pick them off, and I hang back. Still, I find some of my leadership at the base of the guard tower. It seems more or less abandoned, but I stop one of the recruits who wants us to charge in blindly.

"Upstairs, three at a time," I say. "The sister and I will cover you. Now go."

They do, and I count them off in five second intervals. The groups skip past us, none of them looking the slightest bit uncertain. I listen for the sounds of fighting, and sure enough I do hear swords and mail ringing after a pause, but the noise is muted and there are long spaces in between.

"Small group," I say. "Still, we did the right thing. There was no telling."

Sister Abathea doesn't seem to be listening; she is frowning at the masses of Scourge that teem around the cathedral still. I think I know what she is going to say, but she surprises me.

"There's quite a few of them, aren't there?"

I blink at her. "You don't _say_, Sister?"

"Quite a few of them," she repeats. Her frown grows. "But most of them are just geists and ghouls. Where did those knights go, High General?"

"Away from here, let's hope." Still, it's a good question, and now that I think of it I have not seen more than a handful. "A retreat."

"Why would they retreat?" She presses her lips together. "You don't retreat when you're winning."

The words touch me sharply. I jerk my head towards her, mouth open in a curse or insult or reprimand. My instinct is to rebuke her, and without thinking I take one step towards her, then another. I have time to realise that she is staring at me in shock; time to realise that I have no idea what to say.

But before I can summon the words from somewhere, I realise that she is not looking at me but behind me. I begin to turn when a shock wave of sound sweeps over us, making the ground creak: a scream that pierces the air and freezes me, sending me to my knees, trembling.

"Oh, Light, no," Abathea says. The words come out breathy. Perhaps it's just the ringing in my ears.

I look up. Above us, against a cloud bank, that metallic blue shine. Another scream, almost human. Over the gates, across the courtyard, over mud and men alike, a shadow that might belong to some ancient, magnificent bird, that turns my insides to ice.

"Frostwyrm!" someone bellows in the distance, but the cry has not even been taken up before it is above us, keening, wind whistling through the gashes in its wings like a blizzard. I grab hold of Abathea's arm and drag her away from the guard tower while she drags me, screaming, towards it. Then its terrible breath brushes the ground twenty yards away from us, sending up chunks of road and gravel. The wind hits us, boiling, with enough force to lift us from our feet and hurl us back.

We hit the ground hard, tangled in each other. The earth splinters, foams, cracks beneath us, shaking.

My skin is stinging horribly. I open my eyes. I did not realise they were closed. Everything is a mist around us, a hot mist that stinks like acid. When I breathe in it hurts.

Abathea is above me saying something, her eyes wild, but I cannot hear her. I cannot hear anything. I notice, stupidly, that her beautiful cloud of hair has been burnt away.

"What?" I say. Again and again, I say, "What?" I cannot hear her. I think she cannot hear me. We cling to each other and try to struggle to our feet, leaning on each other and tilting. Is the ground still moving, or is it just me?

Abathea puts her mouth near my ear. "My soldiers!" It sounds as if she is speaking to me while I am underwater, but I can tell from her expression that she must be screaming. "My soldiers!"

I turn and look. Where the tower stood, where _we_ were standing mere moments before, there is only a twisted, steaming lump of stones.

"We have to help them!" she yells at me again. She is right. We drag ourselves over to the remains of the tower, somehow, leaning on each other for support. Though I can barely stand I try to roll the smaller stones away, the plaster and wood planks that I can lift. I don't see any survivors, just parts of bodies-crushed hands, bloodied or charred, scraps of clothing. A whole leg, with its owner who-knows-where.

My hearing is returning, and with it an ache like the edge of a pick, and a chorus of screams and moans to match. They seem to be coming from every direction. "Dear Light. How far did it go?" And where is it now? And how many men have we lost? No. I don't want to know that. Wondering makes me feel sick. Or perhaps it is the ground still tilting beneath me.

Abathea doesn't answer. She's working steadily, but her eyes are glassy, as if she is dreaming.

We have not been working long before we are interrupted again. The rumble starts small, no louder than the sound of an over-laden carriage passing over a bridge. But it grows until it is an insistent whine, a creak I know too well. I glance at Abathea, who is still shoveling at the rocks, and then turn back to the cathedral in time to see the gable of the left wing buckle inwards, the walls collapsing in on themselves.

_The girl would not_, I think. I am frozen with dread and indecision-should I run? Attempt to do something? There are still pockets of Scourge around the cathedral, though the frostwyrm has been no kinder to them than us. I could never make it through in my state. Even if I wanted to.

My decision is made for me. There is a moment of utter silence, and then the earth around the cathedral explodes in a rain of dirt, sending up clods and weeds in deadly blossoms. The entire structure creaks like a ship breaking loose from its moorings; the building groans, and the walls are rocking as if drunk. One by one the windows scream and shatter; bricks fall, and the steeple is sinking through the air still intact, and whole chunks of the walls are falling away in grey bursts of smoke like mushrooms.

I stand there, watching the dust fly towards us, watching as what is left of the stonework rolls and crushes the Scourge below. Only then do I realise how many men must have been inside it. I sit down on the ground; even Abathea has stopped digging to watch. I sit down, and I think of all our efforts, and how they have come to nothing so quickly. And I do not even rebuke myself for defeatism, or Abathea for giving up.

A monument to the Light, indeed.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Is it obvious that abominations give me nightmares? Even seeing them on screen makes me want to puke and cry, so in Brigitte's position, I would have just curled up and waited for her to save me. Or, you know, leave me to die.<p>

As I said, the next part of this chapter (the next chapter, you might say) is written and almost totally edited, so it'll be up in a couple of days. Thank you for reading, and for your angelic patience! It means more to me than I can say.


	7. Chapter 7

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Thanks to **Dusty the Umbravita**, **Astriea**, **Aelfin**, **Fantasy Fanatic** [aww, thank you for the compliment! I admit to diverging from canon quite a bit, in the specifics at least. Hopefully it works out okay], **Nyieni**, **Stargazer** [thank you! I don't know if it was soon, but it was certainly 'sooner' ;)], **thrallsgirl29 **[ha! In this universe, she wasn't as lucky-and okay, I wrote most of this before the new monastery was canon!], and **chipperdyke**. You guys are the best!

Warning(s): For graphic violence and references to torture.

Chapter: 7/7

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><p><strong>VII<strong>

We are still like that when a young crusader runs up to me-his uniform is clean, and though he has some scratches and a bandage on his hand he seems unharmed. His eyes grow wide when he sees me, though. However I look, he collects himself quickly.

"Thank the Light you're alive, High General. They said you were dead." When I don't respond, he has the audacity to seize my arm and tug it. He looks like a child-some lieutenant whose name I can't recall. "You have to listen to me. I need to get you to the men right now."

I glance back at the remains of the cathedral.

"High General, you can't stay here. You need to find cover. Please, I beg you."

"There were men in there," I say. Speaking makes my chest ache, so I give a listless gesture. "The Sister and I nearly were, too."

"Praise the Light you weren't." He is dragging me, and he drops his voice. "Whoever was in there is gone now, High General. But we are still alive and we need you."

"Alright," I say, turning away from it, from all of it. If I don't look at it, it isn't real. "Show me."

The dust is still thick around us and visibility is terrible. I cover my mouth with my handkerchief, but I am still choking within minutes. He has to lead me by the hand around overturned carts, the bones of horses with the meat still stuck to them, charred and smoking. I am horrified to realise that the smell makes me feel hungry. But my appetite vanishes when we pass by the gouge the creature carved into the ground, a gash more than fifty feet long. What fire is so hot that it can rend the earth itself?

"I'm taking you to the hill," the lieutenant says, "so you can see. Then you can rendezvous with Bishop Street."

"He's alive?" I say. "That's a mercy."

Only I'm not so sure when I see what's left of our compound. The smoke is rising so thick in places that it obscures the buildings and men alike. The walls are coming down everywhere, the stone warped and darkened as if it were nothing more than wood. But it is towards the ocean I look, my heart twisting.

"Spyglass?" I say, but I know what I will see before I take it. The beach is pockmarked, and the ocean itself is still steaming. The Sinner's Folly burns like a funeral pyre, and its mast and sail are nowhere to be seen. The others are gone entirely-nothing but defiled sea, frothy and bubbling, and rubbish on the beach to mark their passing.

"The attacked the ships," I say. How many men had I ordered down there? Fifty? One-hundred? I cannot remember.

The lieutenant gapes at me. "Did they sink them?"

"One of them is floating," I say, and partly for myself as much as for him, I add, "we'll see if it's seaworthy."

I don't say what does not need to be said: that not every crusader can fit on one ship. But then, if the attack was as bad as it looks, it seems unlikely that we will have sufficient numbers for that to be a worry.

We are dangerously exposed up here, and things are too quiet-there is no sign of the wyrm. "Where is that beast gone to?" I ask.

"Probably circling to get away from the trebuchets." The lieutenant shrugs.

"Still," I say. "We need to arrange an attack while it's occupied." I don't ask myself, _An attack with what?_

"Bishop Street has already headed to the beach," the lieutenant says. He is avoiding my gaze. "Most of the forces are with him. You'll need to speak with him, of course."

The beach. I do not need to ask what that means; I know. Something that might once have been anger coils in my gut, but it is too cold now, cold and desperate and dying. "Yes," I say, and I straighten, even though my entire body aches and my heads swims from smoke. "Yes, take me to him. I think we _do _need to speak."

* * *

><p>By the time we have moved down off the mound, the compound has come back to life-such as it is. All around me are signs of movement, the healers beginning to lift the wounded, people dragging the dead away from ditches towards the fires that smoke everywhere. Very few are unharmed; most are bloodied, their clothing smoke-stained. One man sits on a stone, watching as other men dig furiously at a toppled building. His skin seems to have been blown from his body, hanging off him like clothing, and he stares at me with glassy eyes.<p>

I pass them by without a word. I need warrior, and these are not warriors. I pray that the scene is better where Street is. That there is still a Crusade left for me to rally.

We move through a maze of destroyed buildings and craters, burning yards and dying men. It is all too real and I stare ahead to avoiding looking around me. Is this, like my demon Sally, just another nightmare the Lich King has sent to torment me?

"Up ahead." The lieutenant tugs my sleeve, and I move in that direction. This is where the body of our forces are, clearly, a torrent of men fleeing towards the beach. There is no semblance of order or rank, just terrified individuals in flight. Here there are fewer injuries, and not as severe. I try to raise my voice to call for order, but others are yelling too, and people look at me without seeming to know who I am. My voice fades away at last, hoarse and quiet.

"How many do you think there are left?" the lieutenant asks.

It's a mad question, a terrifying question. A pointless question. "I couldn't guess," I say. "There seem to be about two-hundred here. And there are more at the beach." So about half of our forces accounted for, and half missing, after only one attack. I do not like those numbers. I remember the cathedral, its stones falling like leaves in autumn. The Scourge's doing-and ours.

Beneath my armour, my body hurts; breathing hurts, every step hurts. I wonder what name a healer would give to the injuries I have. I try to feel if my mail is deformed, but moving my arms too much makes something in my upper back twinge. Father used to tease Isillien about that; would Sally tease me, if she were still alive?

Someone behind us gives a dismayed shout, and then people around me are turning, shouting too, crying out. Some point at the sky, but some are already moving away, trying to weave through the masses of crushed bodies.

I turn as well. The hope floods out of me as if through a gap in my armor, leaving me dead cold. The frostwyrm has returned, gliding just below the cloud-line. I have a moment in which I stare at it, not willing to believe that the Light could be this unfair, and I think, with total detachment: it is such a beautiful creature, in its way.

It dips, diving towards the column of men before I can rearrange what I am thinking. My feet are just beginning to move backwards, bringing me up hard against someone else, when it opens its maw and lets loose a gout of runic-blue fire. Even so far away I feel the wind of it hit my face, burning. In that single exhalation it burns through a row of soldiers as if they were hay. The armor vaporises from their bodies before they so much as scream, leaving nothing but that terrible scar in the ground, still smoking where they had once stood.

Another one dips down, I cannot see from where, clasping six or seven shrieking soldiers in its claws before exhaling blue flame on the men below it. The soldiers adjacent are thrown backwards; one of the guard towers shudders and gives way in a spray of sparks like sapphires. My eyes and ears burn from the heat and the noise. Already there are little fires all around us, things burning that ought not burn-stone walls, the earth, horses and armoured men.

Just like that, our strength and certainty dissolves. Our backwards movement towards the beach becomes a screaming rout. I am screaming too, trying to maintain order that has already been lost. I recognise faces: the last line of soldiers, those who had been positioned closest to the gate, is pressing in around us, pressing past us. Someone shoulders into me, shoving me out of the way, then another. "Stand and fight!" I hear myself say, and even to my ears the sound is dulled by the pervasive pounding of wings. _One, two, three, four_. Another frostwyrm passes overhead, steaming in the icy air, a pair of still-struggling soldiers in its teeth. I am shoved back so roughly I nearly lose my footing-surely death in a stampede like this. "Stand and fucking fight, you cowards!"

Now another roar above me. I look in time to see a frostwyrm dive, and I dive with it, flattening myself to the ground even as boots thunder around me. I have a moment in which I wonder whether I have sentenced myself to death by crushing, and then the heat sweeps over us like the baking heat of the sun. Through my mail I feel it, and then my mail itself is red hot, cooking me alive, unbearable, and I cry out-and when I think I can bear it no more, the heat passes, as if blown away.

I do not know how long I am down; my vision darkens and brightens, brightens until it is almost painful. I stagger to my feet, struggling not to faint as my skin prickles, and find myself in a sea of smoke and bodies, some missing heads and torsos. Not ten feet away is a cone of destruction in the ground where men were. I try to turn to the lieutenant, but in the sea of slumped corpses around me, he is indistinguishable.

Now it is my turn, too, to run. I feel as if the skin on my back must be coming away from the muscle like overcooked meat, and my eyes burn, every breath an agony. There are wings all around me now, and behind me, unmistakably, the trot of horses. I don't dare look-couldn't, even if I wanted to. That would make the pursuit real.

I encounter another mass of crusaders at the slope that leads down to the beach. Here the panic is palpable. To my right there is shoving and shouting, and a man falls, screaming, down the side of the cliff, landing with a crunch that makes my stomach churn. I try to bark for order, but my voice is almost entirely gone and the shout comes out a hoarse croak.

There are still, incredibly, trebuchets in place along the southern wall, just to my left, and I fight my way through the throngs towards them. My body stings all over as I climb up, and a few times I have to pause and breathe, but when I reach the top I am rewarded with a view of the cove fanned out below me. Closer it looks even worse-there is fighting going on down there, and the entire place has become a labyrinth of craters, twisted sheets of metal, pockets of crimson plate and robes amid waves of geists. They must have climbed down the cliffs to either side of us. Why did I not anticipate that?

"High General!" I cannot tell where the voice is coming from, or whose it is-it has a note of hope and panic in it. "High General, over here!"

I look, seeing nothing. A hand grabs my calf suddenly, and I struggle to stay upright, tilting against it. Someone hauls me down and I hit the ground on my side, hard. The pain in my back is so intense that for a minute my vision goes black, and the air escapes me in a gasp. My stomach roils, and I struggle not to throw up.

Before I have had a chance to recover, I am pulled to my feet and hauled along with the body of the crowd.

"Are you bloody mad?" It is Street, his face obscured with blood. "You want to be dinner?"

"How dare you-" I rasp, but the rest fades away, because he seizes me by the arm.

"High General." He shouts in my ear to be heard over the sound of screaming and footsteps. "We have to fall back!"

"No!" I try to tear myself out of his grip, with all my strength-and my strength is not inconsiderable-but his hand is iron around my arm. "The boats are gone!"

"There's still one!" Somehow, he is dragging me backwards. Away from my men, away from my fortress and my oaths, away from all the monsters I swore to kill. Away from my Light-given mission.

"It has no mast, you idiot." My efforts are doing nothing; he's moving me down the hill. "How can we sail a ship with no mast?"

"We'll row!" He gives me another yank and I do fall, skidding. The gravel cuts into my hand-I don't remember taking my gauntlets off, but I must have. Street keeps dragging me, not waiting for me to rise. I only barely manage to stumble to my feet. I want to kick at him, to curse him, to smite him for his insubordination and faithlessness, but the words fail. Somehow, like this, running for my life like the basest cowards among my men, I am not High General Abbendis with her fistfuls of Light and unshakable faith, but a mere woman.

The group shoves us from above, and suddenly Street has let go of my arm. He reaches for me again, but there are too many people between us, and just like that we may as well be on different planes.

Freed now, I turn, seeking a way back up the hill, but the bodies are packed too tightly, and I am carried along like trash in the tide. Elbows scrape against my mail, and I smell filth, sweat, the sickly-sweet roast smell of burns, pus and blood and dirty bandages. I turn around again and again, looking into the faces around me, trying to recognise my warriors, my crusade, trying to make them recognise me.

But now we are strangers.

There is a roar, and the masses surge around me, nearly knocking me off my feet. I think, _frostwyrms again_, a thought filled with resignation and despair, a thought that makes my arms and legs tingle, though whether in preparation for fleeing or being torn off I'm unsure. But then steel clangs, and there are hooves on stone, and I know who it is who is behind us.

More shouting, a few grunts and cries, and the sound of swords parrying. I don't have a moment to be glad that we have finally collected ourselves, though, because in that instant there is another massive shove and I am tilting forwards, arms windmilling, and then the road beneath my feet is chunks of slippery stone, and I am sliding with them down the side of the cliff.

My stomach drops, but I somehow stay upright, riding down the fall of stones. Only towards the end do I stumble and fall forwards, catching myself hard with my arms, the skin on my back wrenching hard enough to make me cry out. I land in a tangle of armour and legs, aching and sore, my hands bleeding, but though I feel badly bruised nothing seems to be broken.

Wincing, I stand; there are others around me, groaning, arms and legs twisted. A few seem to have broken backs. Now I see our attackers, have no choice but to face the truth. On their undead horses with their beautiful, monstrous swords, their rotting bodies swathed in armour heavier than any living creature could bear: the Lich King's dear knights. Runic blue, dead and dread.

They are paying no attention to those of us who have landed, riding into the throng. Most don't bother to dismount. Their swords rise and fall, flashing, sending up streams of blood that sparkle in the dim morning light. One of them rides over a fallen soldier, trampling her body into the stone. An arrow bounces off his chest plate in a shower of sparks, and he does not so much as flinch. He charges past me without a glance, as if he does not know who I am. Perhaps he does _not _know who I am. No one else seems to: not the geists, not the other death knights, not even the men who lie at my feet, reaching for me as they die.

Gripped by some sort of mad defiance, I seize a rock and throw it towards him. It hits his horse, not him, but it serves its purpose. The steed turns towards me, tossing its head and snorting. Its eyes are as blue as its riders, but it is him I look at. We stare at each other, both unmoving. His face is hidden, and beneath his plate, I cannot tell what he was in life-a human perhaps, or an elf, or maybe even an orc. His helm is a black I've never seen before, one that does not shine but that sucks in all the light, and his blade sends blasts of icy air towards me as he brandishes it.

I reach for my sword, then realise I don't have one.

His laugh is unmistakable. I tell myself I am not afraid to die, but my hands shake and my knees feel weak.

His steed is faster than a rotting thing has any right to be, and its footing on the rocky shore is smooth. I realise that the tide is coming in now, that in a few hours we will be pushed against the cliffs with nowhere to go-and then the beast is bearing down on me, waking me, and I stumble away from it slowly enough that I feel the ground shaking as it passes, the knight's sword an icy wind over my head.

We face each other again. The sea is before me, behind him, ice-gray, pale and colourless. No one is watching us.

Again he charges, and again I dive away, but this time it is closer, close enough that he cuts hair from my head. It falls at my feet, incongruously red. He's herding me towards the sea, I can tell-the stones are icier here, more treacherous.

"You! Sister!" From the corner of my eye, standing in the surf, a man gestures to me. "Take this!"

He has brown hair, streaked with gray, and sharp, tired eyes. His tabard is brilliant white, bloody red. His arms are strong. "Father?"

His sword flashes towards me like the underbelly of a frostwyrm, but it is all too human steel when I catch it, blade first. The edge bites into my skin, but I refuse to think about that as I toss it to my favoured hand and catch it by the grip.

The knight does not wait. He charges towards me again, head down, hellsteed frosting the air, somehow steady on the stones. I shift as if to attack from the right, and then, as he raises his sword, shift my stance to the left.

He tries to right himself, but even an undead horse can do only so much-it rears, screaming like a babe, and now my men's faces do turn towards me. I feel their gazes like judgment. Before the horse's hooves can come down again I lean all my weight into the blow, and for the first time in a long, long time the Light is there, is with me, unconditionally, its strength my strength, and my arm strikes true, my blade sharper than any mortal blade has ever been. I cut through the steed's neck and the knight's arms, his midsection, his hands, his reins. This is not a mortal's blow. I feel the weight of ages behind me, other hands on other swords, other soldiers against the horror of the Lich King and his minions, all of us one strength, one aim in this moment. The horse tries to rear again, screaming, while its knees buckle, and the knight bellows something, and I can only laugh. _Mortal once more! Mortal once more! From filth you come and to filth you're going!_

The horse lurches forward and falls on top of me.

Its pressure is sudden thing, forcing the air out of my lungs where its weight hits my chest. I try to stay standing and try to move out of its way at once-_stupid!_-but I'm falling backwards, my legs sliding in the ice, sliding all wrong, and I am falling beneath for it a split second that seems to have enough time in it for panic. The rocks come up so hard the wind rushes out of me, crushed between stone and weight. Something snaps, and then a whole chain of snapping from my thigh to my back-_pop pop pop_-and suddenly my chest is blood and flame, and the rest of me is dead ice.

I turn my face aside and vomit into the ground. My breath comes out as a sob, and I tell myself, through my pain, _The High General does not cry_, even as I am crying and cannot stop. It is funny how in death, we become children once more.

After that there is darkness that looms over me like an old friend, turning the sky to startling violet, making even the pale, cold sun white fire. My arms are soaked in blood, the horse's and the death knight's and my own. My movement makes something tear in my chest and I turn to throw up again, but my stomach is empty.

The darkness is on me but it is hot, hot as the flames of all the hells, burning me up from within. My bones are everywhere, all wrong. In the distance, someone is pleading, speaking in my voice. I want to tell her to shut up.

_Sally, _I think. _Father_.

I think night is falling, but it is more smoke. Something wooden is giving way, far off on the horizon. I smell the burning of forests, the cooking of flesh, the cries of men like drowning mice. Someone is beside me, I can feel her presence, but though I reach out to take her hand, I am alone.

_Sally, sister. I come_.

All around me is the screaming of men and horses, and I lean back, let my head hit the rocks, feel my body stretched out along the path. But though I know I am broken, terribly broken, broken beyond even the Light's power to repair, all I feel is a strange sense of peace that settles over me-not soothing numbness, but something oddly close to happiness. It has been so long since I have just lain back, let the world flicker and surge around me, and relinquished all my feelings of responsibility. It is a relief.

The day is colder and brighter than the previous day. The ground beneath me is soaked and cold, but the sky is dark, glorious blue. My back should be aching, judging by the way my body is twisted, but I cannot feel or move my legs. This is not as bothersome as it should be, only I would like very much to shift somewhere drier, and I can't. I search the ground around me with my hands, trying to find purchase to pull myself away, but everything is a mass of slippery wetness and I cannot get a hold. Where has all this mud come from?

A shadow falls over me. His form is huge and hulking, and in my current fevered state I cannot determine who-what-he was. His form shifts, flickering around the edges. It is only the mace he carries, glinting in some dark, beautiful, horrible metal, that is distinct. That and his eyes, which are blue, pale blue, so pale they have almost no colour. Like sunlight on ice. Like frozen steel. Very much alive, and very much unforgiving.

"Admiral Westwind," I whisper, and lift my hand.

When he brings the weight of his mace down on my temple, the blow blooms like flame and rings like a siren-a siren that follows me down into the darkness echoing endlessly, leaving me no relief.

* * *

><p>I can feel nothing when I wake, only the pain in my head, throbbing. My skull feels distended, huge.<p>

The days before come back to me in full, a complete panorama, colours and smells, all of them putrid, the texture of rot. I can look at the memories, calm and remarkably lucid, as though they were nightmares of things that happened to someone else. I can see the details. I can still taste the burning skin and hair, the acid pouring from the death knight's wounds as he and his mount crashed onto me. Had it really seared through my armour, or was that just a dream, too?

And yet I live.

My entire body comes awake gradually: fingers, arms, legs, torso, neck. All of them hurt, but even pain is an improvement. I flex my fingers, feel them move, though I can still see little. I know that I am not in the Morning Lands-we who have been faithful leave our bodies behind in death. And above me, moving gently, are trees, tall and impossibly green, with the wide spade-shaped leaves I remember from my childhood before the war.

But that is impossible. Everything I have loved is gone.

A shadow moves to my right, but though I try to turn my head towards it, I feel only the tension of my muscles moving against bindings. Fear surges through me, jolting me out of my dazed reveries. Of course, of course—the simplest explanation of them all. That this was no rescue, just another view onto a nightmare. Rooms and rooms of them, and I'll never escape.

From above me, someone laughs. His voice is a deep rumble, utterly mirthless.

"Ah, High General. I never thought to see you like this."

I know this tone; I know that wry amusement. Something cold is slowly draining into me, making me heavy. "Admiral Westwind. It's a..." I pause, struggling for the phrase I want. 'Unfortunate occasion?' "Surprise."

He makes a noise that might be another laugh, might be scorn. "Yes. I had a feeling you might say that. People locked in dungeons during sieges tend to fare poorly. As you doubtless hoped, no?"

What I had hoped when I spared it any thought at all, but I do not say that. "It was never my intention that you die."

"Is that why you countermanded the order to hold me with such speed?" I'm certain his eyes must be burning in that awful way, and I am almost glad that I cannot see him. I feel as if I am watching the Crusade disintegrate now, at last. At long last. I wonder if it wasn't here, beneath the surface, all along.

"I never had a chance to countermand it. I was a bit hard to reach."

"You were a bit close to _death_." The word comes out scornfully. "What a fool's end that would have been, crushed by a dead horse."

That stings-my father had died in battle, protecting me. Hardly an echo of his greatness, this. But there is something in Westwind's tone that makes me flinch. I merely say, "Where am I?"

"Alive," Westwind says.

I gathered that, I want to say, but I am focusing, now, on my arms and legs, all of which are immobilized as well. My muscles strain, and I feel the tendons, the tension. Bindings all over, then. At least I'm no longer wholly incapacitated, for all the good it's doing me at the moment.

"Ah," he says. He passes in and out of my peripheral vision. "Yes. You're doubtless wondering about those. My apologies, High General, but I couldn't risk you getting up and wandering around in these parts." He shrugs. "Lordaeron is not what it was."

The air escapes from me as if he'd kicked me in the side. "You are lying!"

"I am not." He still sounds amused, sportive, but there's another current beneath it, something dark, something I do not want to consider. "Just at the border with Quel'Thalas. You'll note the improved foliage. Thank the Cenarion Circle for that, my dear. Those 'subhuman pagans' have their uses."

No-it's inconceivable that he is telling the truth, completely and wholly impossible-and yet was I not lying, on the brink of death, my armour ice-rigid as I bled into the snow, beyond any power to save? Seen from the other side of an inevitable grave, nothing is really so impossible. Perhaps I am in the Morning Lands after all. But if so, why is Westwind here?

Westwind laughs again, more loudly, and steps towards me so that he is standing above me, silhouetted by the sun. His shape is amorphous as if the edges of him are blending into the air, as if he is coming undone at the boundaries. I shake my head, try to clear it, but there is a buzzing in my ears. I cannot seem to focus my eyes.

"Oh, Brigitte Abbendis, naive as your father ever was. All your thoughts on heaven when hell is so very close you could reach out and touch it."

A tremor runs through me. "What does that mean?"

"It means your little game is over. The Onslaught is no more. Alas. It was fun while it lasted."

Fun. The word dangles over me, sharp-edged, mocking, balanced perfectly with his other statement-_the Onslaught is no more_. It is impossible, and yet the Westwind standing before me has a touch of something in him that is frightening beyond words, something that I have tasted again and again and refused to name. I test my voice, but it fails. When I manage to speak, what comes out is not at all what I meant to say.

"You betrayed us."

Westwind actually shrugs, I think, then moves away again, leaving me to squint up into the sunlight. I settle for closing my eyes. "Not this time. You were terribly slow on the uptake, Brigitte Abbendis. I actually was trying to help you."

"This time." The consonants hiss out of me like bullets. "And the other times?"

"I have no more love for the Lich King than you do. Perhaps even less. It was never my intention that the Onslaught be vanquished." He gives a breathless chuckle. "On the contrary. They were my greatest hope for success."

I do not miss the fact that this 'them' does not include a 'me.' "Is that what it was about? You were after the Onslaught's leadership?"

"Not in and of itself. It was nothing personal, Brigitte. I had my own grievances with Arthas Kinslayer, and when it became apparent you weren't sufficient to put an end to him, I moved to remove you."

Not sufficient. Despite everything I am hearing, everything I have suffered recently, those words pierce me as nothing else has. I am suddenly cold; there is a lump of nausea in my throat that feels suspiciously like tears. After everything, everything I have struggled for and suffered, the fact is stark and unrelenting, and so much harder than anything else.

I make myself speak, forcing the words out, even though they are heavy. "So the attack the other day was not your doing."

For a moment he falls silent, obviously brooding. "No," he says at length, "it was not."

"What happened?" It comes out as a croak.

"I thought to buy myself some time by giving him another toy. The little mortals moved on the Wrathgate. I thought that was enough of a distraction for Arthas to keep the greater beasts off us while your men picked off the lesser ones." He shrugs. "I was wrong, I suppose. They lost very quickly. Mortals betray each other with such ease."

I have no love for the cowardly Alliance, and less than no love for the Horde, but this news hits me like one of my father's blows. If the Onslaught is vanquished—and I must admit, it is impossible for me to conceive that it is not—if the Alliance and the Horde have been crushed, then who remains? The Light?

"Is anyone alive?" My voice sounds like a child's, enquiring to her parents after a bad dream.

Westwind, for the first time since he has brought me here, misunderstands me. "I'm sure some of your wayward countrymen managed to escape, and perhaps a few among the Horde, too. Heads will be rolling in Undercity for this. A different breed of corpse."

That isn't what I meant. "But my men—"

"Gone." He sighs. "All of them gone."

No. I will not believe it. They lived, surely, just as I lived. They are somewhere here, somewhere nearby—if I could just reach out, just feel some contact with the Light, I would feel them, too, living and breathing, locked in bad dreams of their own.

Westwind snorts. "You are the dreamer. They slaughtered them all, each and every one, and then they hauled the bodies to Icecrown. I saw them fall. Street, LeCraft, sweet Sister Abathea. They all died like animals."

He says it with relish, almost as if he is sated, somehow—as if the horror has scratched an itch in him he has long been struggling to reach. My stomach jumps; my tears are making my breath come jagged, hard.

"And what kind of—kind of animal are you?"

"The kind of animal who hunts little fools." When he looms over me again, his teeth are brilliant white and sharp as spears, and his eyes are fire. "The kind of animal who considers you and your deluded allies his meat."

"We are not deluded." Even as I say it, I wonder. "The Light is strong. It guards us."

He stares down at me and places his boot on my chest. The pressure is slight, but with my body so battered, his touch is agonizing. The rest of my rejoinder turns into a cough.

"Does it?" His voice is silky-soft as ever. "The Crusade has failed." Another press of his boot, and I choke on bile. "You have failed."

The Crusade will exist as long as there are those who stand against the evil of undeath, but with his foot on me, all I can say is, "Never."

He presses down again, and just as I am seeing stars, he moves away. "You have fight, High General. I admire that. It will make you suffer, but you are not wholly pathetic."

He knows what I am thinking. I can tell that, now, can tell from the way he responds to all my swallowed insults. He has known me all along, and I have been too blind to see it. But I will see now. I will. "What are you?"

His face is pale, innocent and mocking. "So many things, Brigitte Abbendis. Think of me as an avenging spirit, if you like. Come to return the favours you've done so many."

No, no. "Tell me."

His nails dig into my face where he grips my chin and tilts my head back. His eyes are the blue of candle flames, but his smile is nothing human. "Ask Saidan Dathrohan, if you want to know."

I don't want to know-instinct tells me this. But not for the first time, I fight the instinct down, try to replace it with righteous certainty. "Saidan Dathrohan is dead."

The creature that is Westwind makes a noise of polite questioning.

"He died in Stratholme, fighting-he died in Stratholme, fighting Scourge."

And yet now that I've said it, it sounds wrong, and I suddenly can't remember. Why did he go back to Stratholme? When did he leave Hearthglen? I think back to that night with Sally, try to remember her words. Dathrohan was already dead then, we had burned him and mourned him as much as we mourned our own families. Another loss too terrible to imagine.

Wait. That cannot be right. Was he dead then?

She had decided to come to New Avalon, she told me. But even thinking it, it sounds wrong. We are servants, first and foremost, servants and soldiers. We do not simply decide to leave on a whim. Only on the whims of our betters.

For a moment there is silence, and all I can hear is the sound of the trees and the hissing of their leaves, like living rain, and birds chirruping somewhere far off. Then Westwind stands with an incongruous crunch.

"I almost pity you your stupidity, mortal. Your confusion is irritating me. Saidan Dathrohan died in Stratholme years ago during one of your pathetic routine investigations. One of my womb-kin slurped his heart out of his chest and nested in his flesh. You were a puppet's puppet."

I manage to hiss, "Liar!" before his boot connects with my waist and leaves me strangled and silent.

"Don't you know, Brigitte Abbendis?" There is almost something tender in his voice. "We're siblings under skin, you and I. Lying is what we do. I to others, you to yourself." There are still stars dancing in front of my eyes as his boots crunch away on the dry underbrush, the roots and needles of living things. I hear him pause. "But between you and I, I think the time for lying is past. I think it is the time for some lessons in truth."

* * *

><p>I am a Crusader, and I do not truck with demons.<p>

If that is what this creature wearing Westwind like a cloak is. I watch him now, sensitive to all the lapses I had failed to notice before: how his gestures are alternately too big or too small, how his mouth twitches sometimes, as if swallowing words he would prefer to say; his eyes, as bright and lifeless as stone. The eyes of a corpse-puppet. The eyes of a dead thing claimed and reanimated.

I turn away from him when he returns, close my eyes and shudder.

This watching gives me something to focus on. For a while, at least, until my focus is invariably forced back to me, to my body, and all the minute variations of the things Westwind does to it. It is a hard lesson to learn once more, once over. That I am flesh and blood, skin and bone. That I can be brought down from my reveries with a blow to the stomach, electricity at my fingers, a knife along my skin. This thing-in-Westwind is transcribing stories on me, turning me into a litany of hard truths. The body is real. If there is anything else, I can't remember it.

The hours pass in seconds. Count them, I tell myself, count them and measure your breath by them, and that will keep you sane. Hadn't Sally told me that once? Hadn't father counseled me on how to resist torture?

I had thought myself above the pains of my flesh. It is a cruel reminder that I, too, am a creature of matter, and the material vessel is a weak thing. Easily corrupted. Easily turned against us. I am being driven apart at the base, torn in two. Every point of me, every pore, becomes the site of a battle I can only lose.

I am asked no questions, given no ultimatums, made no offers. There is nothing, just the countless hours, Westwind's sudden appearance. He feeds me, gives me water. I try to refuse, and he forces it down my throat, makes me choke. I try to choke. But even that is denied me.

"Please," I say at one point. "Please, let me go home. Your secret is safe with me."

He draws one of his nails down my throat, and the edge is so sharp I taste it the way I always taste metal from a sword wound. "Now you beg. Never fear, High General. All things must end. But not yet, not yet."

My body is remade, rebroken, remade. I am stretched on the rack, bent with wires. I hear myself, my voice a stranger's. I hear myself, begging for death, for my father, for my mother. I no longer know this other woman with whom I share a self. She is weak. She is undone. She does not remember the Light, or her men, only blood and death, and a girl with eyes the colour of flame whose name is 'Sally'. Sally Sally Sally. Her world has grown small indeed.

"Kill me then," she says one day, when her skin has reknit itself to her muscles, and her eyes can again see.

His smile is broad, all teeth, a predator's grin. "Oh no, High General. Oh no." His touch on my face is cold and hard. "I can think of something much more appropriate for you."

And then I feel the point of his dagger through my chest, a grey weight that presses all the air from my lungs and leaves me gasping and cold, shivering around it, a snared animal. It hurts, but not as much as the other things. Almost boring. Almost unnoticeable.

I can tell there is a lot of blood, because I can smell it. But my head is strapped back, and all I see above me are the trees, the same trees all the time, distant and beautiful and whole. Their greenness intensifies and fades before my eyes. There is a shadow that is forming between the branches, a hole in the universe, growing bigger and bigger until it looms over me, ready to swallow me whole.

And impossibly, I am not praying as I should be, thinking merely, _Father_, and thinking, _Sally_.

Perhaps that, too, has become a sort of prayer.

* * *

><p>I have a secret for you:<p>

I have heard the story of the Culling of Stratholme half-a-hundred times. They say that it's the moment when Arthas turned, setting his feet on the path that led to his soul's damnation—at least, that's how Isillien phrased it. I never said so to his face, but I find that statement truly perplexing, as if there were a single choice to be made that determined his fate, as if he had not already chosen evil, again and again.

I imagine myself in his place, sometimes.

And this is where I start to feel myself slipping, lying awake in my bed, listening to the pack ice groan against the shore, listening to the rafters creak and the white hush of falling snow. It is so quiet here, sometimes I think I cannot bear it, that I will start screaming and screaming just to fill up all the spaces: maddened by silence. I doubt myself. I never did, before.

Sally stayed by my side in New Avalon for three weeks, and they were three of the happiest weeks in my memory. But even that brilliant joy knew its shadows.

Breakfast. We sat on the balcony of my office in the cathedral, drenched in pink from dawn. Sally sipped tea from a china cup with a chipped lip. We watched the colour seep into the water, silver and red and turquoise.

"The Light lives on," she said.

I glanced at her, surprised. Sally had never shown any interest in beauty before. Aside from mine, of course.

She met my questioning look. "When the burden of duty grows to heavy, I reflect on the things that the Light has given me, and what I must do to protect them."

I understand now; I didn't, then. "Like hurt people," I said. "Like kill."

Suddenly she looked uncomfortable; the stiffness of her posture no longer seemed natural but forced. "I don't feel guilty for hunting our enemies. Some things are worse."

I knew what she was referring to. The day when our prince turned renegade and so much more. The day the Silver Hand was disbanded, and our heroes were named traitors. "What about it?"

"I would have killed them too," she said. Her voice was barely audible above the sea. "I would have put them all to the knife."

I swallowed. Her hand was so cold when I touched it. It was as if she'd been dead for years.

She sat back, pulling out of my grasp. "It would be… easy."

And that leaves me with a puzzle to solve, because obviously she thinks and I think that what he did that day, in that city, was right. But what he did in that city marked the point of no return. He did right, and in doing right, fell; what would have happened if Stratholme had not fallen? What would have happened if he turned away with Uther the Lightbringer and the sorceress?

He would have been spared. But Lordaeron would have fallen anyway, perhaps.

I find this question disturbing, not because I agree with the man who became the Lich King, but because it shows that sometimes there is no way. We follow our choices down dark paths, and they lead us to dead ends. Unsolvable puzzles. Tragic choices. Intractable binds. And how do you know? Maybe I am on such a path right now.

If we will what is good and choose what is wrong, can the Light forgive us?

Arthas and Isillien and my father say no. And I do not think so, either.

It feels strange, to think that Sally did; to think that for all her terror and her doctor's gift distorted, she knew the secret to keeping the faith. I would so love to know it. I would so love for her to whisper it in my ear as I slept, like a fairy godmother from a cradle-story.

"Patience," she might say, stroking my hair: mother, sister, lover. "Patience, High General. Blessed are the young, for they know nothing of time. Everything is their kingdom. And their kingdom cannot fall."

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Okay, okay, don't kill me, I beg you. There IS an epilogue as you can see, and I hope it will somewhat make up for what seems like a pretty downer ending otherwise.<p> 


	8. Epilogue

**Pale as Grass in Winter**

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Warning(s): For mild references to torture and zombie-level horror.

* * *

><p><strong>Epilogue<strong>

In Undercity it is always dark.

Not that Sally minds the darkness. There's actually something beautiful about it, the way it makes every colour fade to silver, leaving a world stripped of depth, reduced to outlines. That would have been a thought-crime in her days as a crusader, but she is not a crusader anymore. She worships new gods, at new altars. She is a new woman. Or un-woman, as the case may be.

She has a position in the Royal Apothecary Society now-a title, a laboratory of her own, the deference of those around her. She never wants for compounds or chemicals. Her slightest wish, however grand, is granted her in the form of finely leaded beakers, rare herbs, scalpels sharp enough to cut paper. Master Apothecary Faranell calls her Doctor Whitemane, with a twist of his already-twisted lips, as if the idea is too ridiculous for words. Sally wants to tell him that she was a doctor once, actually, thank-you-very-much, only she can't remember if that's true or not. She can't remember much anymore. But she can remember a little.

There are many former crusaders among the new ranks of the Forsaken-some Sally thinks she can even recognise, low ranking grunts and acolytes that never made much of themselves. Outside of her robes of the priesthood they do not recognise her. She goes about in black now, shrouded like a corpse-the corpse she is, really-with only her face showing. Her face is the part of her that is least damaged, perhaps even maintains a sort of baleful, ruined beauty, like some ancient kaldorei temple, half-submerged and vine-clogged.

She had never thought the undead could be vain, but this is before she met Sylvanas Windrunner.

The Banshee Queen clearly takes some sort of perverse pleasure in raising to her service those who so strenuously fought against undeath in life, so the crusaders form a key segment of her more recent additions. Sally might dislike this jab at her former-allegiances, but she knows better than to openly deride the wishes of the Banshee Queen. Her word is more than law, has the strength of natural facts like wind and rain and death. Only not so much that last one.

So when none other than Master Apothecary Faranell approaches her in the laboratory to say that the Banshee Queen requires her services, Sally ducks her head into a bow that befits Faranell's station and submits, even though she is in the middle of an experiment and doesn't want to be disturbed. Her experiment is strapped to the table, anyway, moaning piteously. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

"Why don't you take out his tongue, you little fool?" Faranell says, but he sounds like he's smiling. He always sounds like he's smiling. Sally wants to ask him what he finds so damn funny, only the last time someone talked back to Faranell he substituted them for his current test subject. Not an appealing prospect.

She follows him to the Banshee Queen's royal quarters without complaint, and for his part he remains silent. Undercity never sleeps (and that's a bad joke if she's ever heard one), but so late at night only the other Forsaken are stirring. The ceilings tower above them in darkness, and the air is still, seeming to muffle all other noises. The only thing she can hear clearly, besides their footsteps, is the quiet rushing of the sewers, and the drip of water all around them, and the flap of bats' wings in the distance.

The dreadguards glance at Faranell once, then let them in without question. From the corner of her eyes Sally can see them, their hands on their swords, their eyes never leaving hers and Faranell's backs. They take no risks where the queen is concerned. She has already died once. Once is enough.

Inside, the Banshee Queen is standing atop her dais as ever, upright and unyielding even though Sally can clearly see the shape of her bones through her skin whenever she moves. Beneath her hood her hair falls lank and dirty yellow around her face, and her teeth are grey, brown around the gums, cracked and sharp. And yet there is something fascinating about her. You can see the elf still: the perfect facial structure, the delicate tapering ears, the lithe grace. The Banshee Queen is horrifying, but she is never ugly.

Sally drops to one knee and lowers her head. "You summoned me, my queen?"

Sylvanas's bone-white eyes flick to Sally, then back to Faranell. It's him she addresses, but from her tone, Sally is grateful for that. "The resurrection did not proceed as easily as you said it would."

Faranell has knelt as well; he does not rise, but his voice still has an ironic note. "The girl's heart had been removed, my queen. It was a non-trivial matter to repair the damage."

"Then you should have said so." She doesn't raise her voice, but it seems to echo in the meeting hall anyway, and Sally cannot fight her wince. "Your incompetence has cost us too much time already."

"My queen orders, and I obey."

Sally is not the only one to hear the note of insubordination in that. The Banshee Queen's eyes are cold and piercing, and she stares down at Faranell. "I pray I don't need to remind you of the mistakes of your predecessor. Do not play me for a fool, Master Apothecary. You are replaceable as well."

There is no humour in Faranell's voice when he answers. "I've never thought so, my queen. I serve you with a single mind. If I have displeased you..."

Sylvanas doesn't wait for him to finish before turning to Sally. "One of our sisters is confused. You must make her see reason."

For a moment, Sally is taken aback-plenty of the newly-awoken Forsaken are insubordinate, panicky and desperate, longing to burrow back into the grave. She herself had been when she'd awoken face up on a slab of concrete, cold all over, Scourge faces staring down at her. "With all respect, my queen, what creature could so warrant your attention?"

Faranell's face turns, slowly, towards her, and if Sally could blush, she would. _Stupid, stupid, you don't question the Banshee Queen_. Sylvanas, too, has narrowed her eyes, and if looks could kill-well, fortunately for the Forsaken, they can't. But Sally merely studies the stone floor. "I beg your forgiveness, my queen. If you desire her cooperation, you must have your reasons. They are not for me to know."

"They are not," Sylvanas agrees. "But since you doubt my orders, let me explain. This one has maintained full knowledge of the humans' little settlements to the east, knowledge that can be used to our advantage. I'm sure you're aware that they have been a not insignificant irritation to us. Do you find that that warrants your attention, Apothecary Whitemane?"

Sally chews at the torn bit of skin near her lip. "Anything you ask of me warrants my attention, my queen. You are wise indeed."

Sylvanas must be placated, for she turns away from them both, towards a doorway that Sally knows leads to her personal holding cells. "The informant."

Even Sally's undead eyes cannot at first make out her figure through the gloom. She is short and well-muscled, hair and skin the same red-brown. And then they bring her closer, so that Sally can see, and only the feeling of Faranell's eyes on her keep her from gasping. There are two dreadguards on either side of her, dragging her along. She's wearing some sort of robe, black and tattered like a grandmother's, except there's a strip of old black lace that has been torn from it and hangs along the ground. Sally wants to run to her, to push the dreadguards away from her, to help her stand upright.

"Let me go-I will not assist this... this monster-unhand me, and we'll settle this ourselves with swords-"

"Brigitte," Sally says. Her voice is so quiet she can barely hear it, but all of them turn towards her. She sees Brigitte blink once or twice, as if she cannot quite get used to the idea that she no longer needs to, notices that her eyes look huge in her gaunt, wasted face. "Brigitte, is it really you?"

Brigitte's mouth opens. "Sally?"

She looks remarkably well-preserved-no signs of rot, just wounds, wounds all over her face and body, long surgical lines that stretch up her arms and over her neck. Sally knows those too well, knows what they mean. Even now her heart turns over. "Yes, it's me. I am here, too."

Brigitte's expression is anguished (Sally knows a little bit of jealousy that she still has enough muscle control for that): her mouth is twisting, her eyes wide, and if she could cry, maybe she'd have tears in them. "Oh, Sally, Light, please, no. No, not you."

She doesn't know what to say to that, but at least Brigitte isn't struggling any more. "I am... sorry you died."

Faranell makes a gurgling sound she now recognises as a snicker. And, okay, that's a pretty ridiculous thing to say to someone, but what sorts of niceties govern these occasions?

"Brigitte, you need to listen to me." She takes a step forward, then another. Brigitte does not recoil from her, but she also isn't looking at her face-she's staring at Sally's apothecary apron like she's carrying plague in her pockets. "You have to calm down. You are among friends now. Do you understand? I am here, and so are some of the others from before. The Banshee Queen is wise and powerful, and she protects us. You must swear fealty to her, and offer her-"

Brigitte makes a noise that is nearly animal. "Swear fealty to a Scourge monster? How can you say that?" She twists in the dreadguards' grips, but for all the good it does she might as well be nothing more than a limp doll. "They are worse than beasts! They are an abomination against the Light and everything we stand for!"

The laugh tears out of her, and even to her ears it sounds horrible, hacking its way through her only-partially closed windpipe. "Are you blind? Look at yourself. Look at _me_. _We _are the monsters now. Wake up, sister. Embrace us. You have no other choice."

At last Brigitte tries to move away, but the dreadguards' grasp on her is too firm. She looks up at Sally's face now, and though Sally cannot bear it she recognises the revulsion in her eyes. She knows it is the same revulsion with which she has stared at herself. It is too much-too cruel. No matter what, there must be some core of her that remains, some immaterial soul that makes her _her_. Surely beneath everything she is still Sally. If only Brigitte will see. If only she will stop struggling.

"You are mad," Brigitte says. It has none of the Abbendis venom in it, only sorrow. Her voice shakes a little; all of her shakes. "You are mad. You see nothing."

"No," Sally says. "I finally see clearly. We were blind fools, all of us, even your father. We were wrong. Arthas was the enemy, but now Arthas is gone. We have no more purpose. But the Banshee Queen will build us a home." She reaches out for Brigitte, but with the eyes of a stranger she sees her fingers, the skin worn away at the joints and patched roughly, with ungentle hands. She feels Brigitte's horror as her own, and presses her fists to her side instead. "Please, believe me. Help me. She will build us a kingdom like we always dreamed. One where we'll be safe. We'll never have to run again. We can be together. It will never fall."

There is a moment in which Brigitte hesitates-just a moment, so quick another might miss it, but it is the crack that they will burrow their nails into later, the rift they will tear apart in the weeks and months and years that follow. Brigitte has chosen the wrong side. They have an eternity to wait for her, and eternity is long, long enough for second-guessing, for redaction, for regrets. A piece of armor falls away from Sally's soul, leaves it open and raw, even as Brigitte straightens and shakes herself.

"I will not build a monument to evil," Brigitte says. She speaks with forced bravado, and Sally does not know whether to roll her eyes or fall to her knees and beg the Banshee Queen's indulgence. _Brigitte has always had more lip than sense. Please, forgive her, she does not know what she is saying._

But, against all possible expectations, Sylvanas actually smiles, and instead of letting her former beauty show through it makes her face look even more like a grinning skull's.

"When I am victorious," the Banshee Queen says, "all of Azeroth will be a monument to _us, _sisters."

**The End**

* * *

><p>Author's Notes: A few comments on timelinestory/lore issues.

In Old Hillsbrad, Sally Whitemane is seen playing with Renault Mograine. She cannot be more than 12, making her at most 20 (TWENTY) when we kill her in SM, and that's being generous—in reality, she's more likely to be 18. In _Ashbringer, _however, two years after Old Hillsbrad, she's seen leading an assault to protect Hearthglen and doing some pretty badass Light magic (and showing some pretty feminine attributes, ifyaknowwatimean), and looking actually _older_ than Brigitte Abbendis.

I've gone with the _Ashbringer _timeline, if only because it's more recent and teenage!sexualised! Sally is creepy as hell, but yeah, the whole thing is a mess. So I do apologise for any confusion I've caused or errors I've made. I fairly tore out my hair trying to sort it out before I just gave up. It's not the point of the story, and I hope you all forgive me because I hate lore snafus as much as anyone, but it's just a terrible, _terrible _snarl, and I'm not going to go wild unravelling it.

As a final parting note, I am also looking for a discussion buddy/beta-reader for my upcoming long fic, EVERLASTING FIRE. If you:

1) Love blood/high elven lore, Dalaran, and sorcerous politics, and, 2.) Enjoy my work, but want to slap me upside the head for my stylistic errors/canon slips/bad pacing/OOC asides/general cluelessness,

Then PLEASE let me know. The fic is primarily drama, with, of course, romance subplots and obligatory horror elements, and the major characters will be Aegwynn, Jaina Proudmoore, Lady Liadrin, Archmage Modera, and Grand Magister Rommath/his sundry magisterial monsters. I can be reached by PM or email, which is kyneska0 AT gmail DOT com.

Cheers, and thank you so much for reading. It's been fun for me, and I hope it's been fun for you, too.


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